


The Tail Fin Is Pointing the Wrong Way

by adjourned



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Amnesia, Analytical Chemistry, Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, Childhood Friends, Childhood Memories, Employee Theft, Friends to Lovers, Inaccurate Biochemical Research, M/M, Magic, Mainly John Egbert/Dave Strider, Marine Biology, Merpeople, Minor Rose Lalonde/Kanaya Maryam, OSHA violations, Other ships are late/implied, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Science, Spectroscopy as a Plot Device, Trolls on Earth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-28
Updated: 2020-01-10
Packaged: 2020-10-29 21:50:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 40,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20803529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adjourned/pseuds/adjourned
Summary: I chuckle, not sure if I'm relieved or disappointed. "Haha, yeah. Vriska would flay me for even thinking the word 'mermaid' in her presence. I promise I won't cut you up in a lab!" We don't even have a dissection table big enough for-No, bad John! No dissecting!Dave generously changes the subject away from my sunken dreams of winning a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This work had a rocky start by my standards, but I'm reasonably pleased with how the latter two-thirds turned out, so I implore you to reserve your judgment for a few chapters first. Ideally one would wait until chapter 5 or 6 before deciding to drop this, but that's half the fic already and I suppose a bit much to ask.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you like it.

You know what's great? The ocean. I'm not much for swimming, but I'll happily spend days out on the beach giving myself skin cancer, maybe wading around in the shallows, enjoying the sensation of sand and seawater sloshing between my toes. Landing a day job that's 90% mucking around with zebrafish somehow hasn't absolved me of my watery obsession, which I count as another point in favor of the sea being totally awesome.

So when Vriska told me that I had way too much paid vacation banked and that I needed to get my butt out of the lab and start getting a life or I'd die sad and alone at the age of forty, I packed my things, took a train out to the one of the rare beachside small towns that Big Tourism hasn't sniffed out yet, and booked a small cabin for a week. A bit on the expensive side, but LOLAR pays well; I can afford to splurge a little.

Which brings me here, swinging my legs from this cool rock outcrop I found this afternoon overlooking the waves, watching the setting sun as the sea breeze buffets my exposed skin. Most of the visitors from earlier have trickled back home for the night, but my place is close by, so I'm just enjoying the solitude of the warm evening for the last hours of light.

Though there's this one blond swimmer still having the time of his life splashing around all the way out past the buoys. It's kind of insane how long he's been out there. I've been keeping an eye on him—just in case he passes out from exhaustion or gets a cramp or something, I swear—and I don't think he's been out of the water since I set up here after lunch. Maybe he's training for long-distance swimming.

Checking my watch, I figure that it's about time to start trekking my way back. I'll indubitably get sidetracked by a cute turtle or a funny seashell that turns out to be inhabited by a very crabby crustacean, so it'll be past dark by the time I finish meandering my way back home. See, Karkat? Time management. It's a thing I can do, contrary to popular belief, and by popular belief I mean your hilarious rage-filled Vantas diatribes.

So I haul myself back over the edge, hop carefully down the crags of the rock, and thump softly into the damp sand, almost faceplanting as my right foot sinks into the wet mush and I lose balance. I manage to catch myself with my hands, though, and dust them off as I stumble forwards, beaming proudly at an invisible audience for my medal-worthy demonstration of coordination.

While I'm at it, I turn around to behold the orange horizon one last time.

Huh.

Where'd that guy go?

I squint at the waters where I last saw him, sweeping the wider area to see if he's just a _really fast_ swimmer, but he's nowhere to be seen. Not a glint of blond hair or tanned skin in sight. Hmm. Don't panic. Maybe he's trying to see how long he can hold his breath. Or I just missed him making off while I was falling over like a dunce. So many perfectly reasonable explanations.

A pinch of light brown just barely catches my eye from under the water and vanishes. At first I think it's a trick of the light, but then it happens again, stopping just shy of breaking the surface.

Fuck.

I spin around, looking for a lifeguard, but only find one of those tall metal chair perch thingies with an mounted umbrella far off in the distance, and there's nobody in it.

Turning back, it's still there, the bobbing gleam of color between the waves.

He hasn't surfaced for air.

Okay. I know you're not supposed to go after a struggling friend because you could get dragged down yourself and make two drowning idiots for the real professionals to rescue, but I part-timed as a lifeguard for a few semesters of undergrad way back in the day. I remember most of the guidelines, and even years of laboratory drudgework later, I am still strong enough to keep two people afloat in saltwater.

I've got this.

I toss my glasses and watch onto my bag in the sand and run forward, diving in once the water's up to my waist. Keeping my target fixed in my mind, I swim as fast as I can physically muster, picking up speed as muscle memory kicks in and I remember how legs work. Dammit, I'm rustier than I thought, and the salt stinging in my eyes isn't exactly helping.

When I finally glance back to shore after who knows how many seconds of critical rescue time, it's farther away than I thought. Then once I turn forward again I realize that I'm a bumbling moron and that I've managed to lose all sense of direction in that one genius move. I can't tell if the currents have been pulling me north or south, and there's not enough landmarks to orient me towards where I last saw the guy. Agh, now that I think about it, I don't even remember where he was anymore!

Hoping my luck will throw me another bone, I scan the cresting waves for another glimpse of the man.

There it is! A smudge of skin tone refracted through the water off to my left.

I dive and kick as hard as I can, propelling my body towards the hazy silhouette I'm now picking out through the aquatic murk. Surface for a lungful of oxygen, then back into the water, beelining for the writhing figure. As I approach, reaching out after my last stroke, more of his details come into focus.

Weird. He doesn't _look_ like he's struggling, just kind of swooshing around in the water. What's more, as I glide closer...

The man stops moving, turns around underwater and looks me quizzically in the eye.

His irises are a startling blood red, flitting over me from head to toe as I float to a submerged stop. I glub a few bubbles in confusion, but that's not what throws me off.

No, it's that he doesn't have legs.

What he does have is an actual fish tail below his waist, complete with a lunate caudal fin that's wiggling happily as he swims a little lap around me, myself turning in the water to track his motion.

What I'm saying is that _he's a mermaid!_

Then I remember that I have to breathe, even if this guy apparently has gills (_gills!_) to take care of that, and I burst out of the water, gasping a huge gulp of air.

Right on cue, the mermaid guy—wait, it it mer_man_?—pops his head out of the water next to me, shaking droplets from his hair and face. That's the guy I was looking for! Bleached blond hair, sunny complexion, really nice frame now that I'm up close... wait, stop getting distracted! I inspect his face closer, and he does have gills, little slits by his chin that definitely aren't big enough to oxygenate that much body mass, what the hell?

"Like what you're seeing?" he drawls, tinged with a faint Texan accent.

"Well, yeah, but-" I don't even register what I'm saying, I'm too busy diving down to get a better look at his tail.

It's clearly supposed to be fusiform, but also sort of flattened dorsoventrally at the waist connection to fit to the human torso, which makes some sense. I see a line of small dorsal finlets going down his lower spine, and then there's the big tail fin, which I just realized is pointing the wrong way? Well, I guess it doesn't really matter for propulsion much as long as he has the right muscles to flex it properly, and I think it's not like mythical seamen have an evolutionary history to justify the "correct" anatomy, but it's weird!

I surface again. The merman (_merman!_) is looking at me strangely, but I'm too excited to care.

"Ohmygodthisissocool!" I gasp, almost swallowing a mouthful of seawater in my rush to express my awe. "Hey, are you a mammal or a fish?" Or neither? "How do you reproduce?"

He cocks an eyebrow. It strikes me that my opening speech for first contact shouldn't be "tell me about your genitals", as endlessly fascinating they might be.

"Oh, crap, am I being rude?" I ramble, bobbing over a wave. "Hi! I'm a human! Uh, you probably knew that. My name's John!"

He's just staring at me for a few seconds, probably wondering what the hell's wrong with this rambling douchebag. After a period of deliberation, he finally sticks a hand out.

"Dave," he says. Wow. So cool. I grab it and shake it vigorously. "Nice to meetcha."

"Yeah. So." I have so many things to say, but none of them are coming out. "You exist!"

"I mean, I feel pretty existy," he remarks. I have to resist the urge to poke him to test the claim. I don't think I'm hallucinating, but who knows? Out in the deep ocean waters isn't a great place to be hallucinating, though.

"No, I mean you're real!" Is that the same thing? That's the same thing. "I didn't know mermen were real! Actually, I thought for sure they weren't. This is awesome!"

"I am pretty awesome," Dave agrees. He sounds a mix between confused and amused.

I flail around in excitement, splashing water everywhere. Yes, I am a mature adult. Cut me some slack; this is a life-changing revelation right here! I keep talking. "Are you magic? You have to be, none of this makes any biological sense. Is magic real?"

He looks at me like I asked him if socks are real, that is to say, as if I'm incredibly dumb and also spouting a complete non-sequitur to the subject at hand, which I guess is meeting a legendary man-beast in person for the first time in my life.

"Yes, John," he says slowly. "Magic is real." Despite the unimpressed deadpan, he cracks a smile.

I grin back at him.

This is the best day of my life.

* * *

"So what made you come all the way out to accost poor old me?" Dave asks.

We're back in the shallows because my legs were getting tired and I couldn't float there treading water forever. I went back to get my glasses, left my bag where it was and came back out to where Dave was waiting, so now I'm sitting cross-legged in ocean up to my chest, while he's lying a few feet over with his upper body propped out of the water on his elbows. The tips of his tail fin are just sticking out of the water way in the back, twitching lightly as he shifts in the sand.

I flush in embarrassment. "I thought you were drowning." It sounds stupid now that I know what he is.

"Aww," he coos, inordinately pleased for some reason. "That's sweet. You do know you shouldn't go out for drowning people if you're not trained, though, right?"

"I am trained," I say, scowling. "I was. Years ago."

"Ooh," Dave smirks. "Well, then. You'll be the first one I call if I somehow manage to start drowning in my own natural habitat. And if I inexplicably find myself in possession of a waterproof cell phone. And if I have your number." He winks at me and I groan.

"What would you even do with my number?" I point out, deliberately sidestepping the blatant line. "Do you get cell service in the middle of the Pacific?"

"Man, just play along," Dave complains. He flops over on his back and sinks down, his peeved expression disappearing under the water. A flurry of bubbles comes out of his nose and breaks against the surface.

"Are you breathing in through your gills and out your lungs?" I wonder out loud. "How does that work?"

Dave pops back out of the water, rolling to face me. "Huh? What did you say?"

I wave him off. "Random thought."

It's probably the air in his lungs from before he went down. Is he an obligate air breather? Ah, crap, he's noticed me staring at his gills again.

"Now you're making me think you only want me for my body," he laments. "Woe is me. How many times more must I brave disappointment before I find a man worthy of my affections? When will my fishy behind finally find a home to roost?" He swishes his tail despondently, kicking up a spray of seawater that grazes me.

"You're not a bird," I tell him, snickering. "You're getting your metaphors mixed up."

"Hey! Fish can absolutely roost. Like... clownfish. They do roosting stuff in anemones. Or some functional equivalent of it, anyway."

I stick my tongue out at him. "That's such a gross simplification of the symbiotic-"

"Shhh," Dave says, pressing a salty finger to my lips. "Shut up, I'm the fish expert here, nerd."

I decide not to correct him that I'm a doctor in marine biology.

Instead, I lick the offending digit. He squeaks and pulls away, frantically scrubbing the contaminated tip off with seawater.

"Do you hit up every human you see like this?" I ask, leaning in and settling my chin on laced hands. He did agree surprisingly quickly when I asked if he could come closer to shore for a more extended <del>interrogation</del> chat. You'd think a merperson would be more careful about following suspicious strangers to shore, but no! Zero hesitation.

"Nah," he says.

I expect him to continue with "only the cute ones" or something like that, because all Dave's been doing is hit on me all this time, and while he is really funny and kind of cute for a fish guy, I was joking about the seduction thing! All I want right now is to do sweet _science!!!_ and maybe make a new super cool merfriend.

But instead, he says, "Most people don't see me."

"Huh?" I huff, blinking. That's a strange thing to say. "Are you really good at hiding, or invisible, or what?"

"It's the ancient magic of Skaia," Dave deadpans, wiggling his fingers spookily. "It's, like, only people that are 'meant' to see us can see us, whatever that means. Most humans just stare right past me like I'm not there."

"So you're selectively invisible?" A billion questions are running through my head. "What if-"

"I don't know how photos would work, I don't know if they see a hole in the water, I don't know if they can touch me if you physically put their hand into contact with my body," he lists off, rolling his eyes. "It's hard to test because, surprise, the kind of character that can see me isn't the kind to actually try and do those things. Maaagic, motherfuckers."

"Oh..." I frown, not completely understanding. "Then it's basically fate? Are we soulmates now? Do I have to quit my job and move here to seal our star-crossed inter-species romance?" I joke. Aw, shit, now I'm just egging him on.

"Nah," he says, thankfully letting the bait slip. "All it means is I can trust you not to kidnap me and cut me apart in a lab. Or go to the presses and announce the existence of a heretofore undiscovered aquatic subspecies of homo sapiens, not that anyone would believe you, because merpeople, seriously?" He affects a snooty posh man voice. "What a ludicrous proposition. Perish the thought. We are a respectable publication, boy, not the downstream dumping ground of your hillybilly rumor mill. Get out of my bloody office."

I chuckle, not sure if I'm relieved or disappointed. "Haha, yeah. Vriska would flay me for even thinking the word 'mermaid' in her presence. I promise I won't cut you up in a lab!" We don't even have a dissection table big enough for- _No_, bad John! No dissecting!

Dave generously changes the subject away from my sunken dreams of winning a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. "Hey, do you live around here, or...?"

"I'm on holiday," I reply. Hey, are mermen migratory?

He grumbles under his breath. "I guessed as much. Would've seen you around if you were a local. How long are you staying?"

I tap my chin. This is an oddly mundane turn to this conversation.

"Seven, eight days? I'm heading off next Sunday."

"Cool," he says. "But dude, this town is boring as hell. What were you even planning on doing?"

I shrug. "To be honest, I'm only here for the scenery. Brought a few books, my laptop, might get a tan, build a sandcastle, you know. Maybe cook a little? Work doesn't give me a lot of time for proper baking, but the place I'm staying at has an oven and some nice equipment. It's just a pleasant change of pace not to be buried under concrete all the time."

"Sandcastle?" Dave repeats.

"It's a perfectly respectable leisure activity," I retort, pretending to be affronted. "I'm a grown-ass adult. I will make the best sandcastle and you can't stop me."

"Boooring," he groans. "You know, I've got a better idea. Come hang out with me."

Well, if he's going to offer... "Sure!"

To my surprise, Dave looks caught off by my enthusiastic consent, as if he was expecting me to refuse. Why would I? The genuine grin spreading across his face is the most emotion I've seen him express so far. Man, did I accidentally just mermaid-marry myself to him? Is there some weird context I'm missing?

On second thought, this makes sense. He must not get a lot of fresh company around here, especially if most humans can't even _see_ him. Does he know anyone from the town? He has to, right? How else would he learn about English and sandcastles and all of these modern civilization things? I decide to ask about it.

"Do you have any other human friends?" Another thought occurs to me. "Do you have a family? Are you going to introduce me to them? Will we get pitchforked for violating the Statute of Secrecy, or are they going to be all like 'hurr durr trust in the deep magic, my child'?"

Dave's smile falters a bit.

"Nah."

My joviality stutters. "To..."

"All of it," he mutters.

Oh.

That's... really sad.

He doesn't have _anyone_? How long has he gone without talking to a real person? No wonder he's been so weird and eager about this: he's desperate. Now I feel bad for taking advantage of this to grill him on magic fishperson biology. Not that I've really done much of that, but I was planning to.

"I do technically have a sister, but she fucked off to the Arctic Ocean years ago on a spirit quest or some shit. Haven't heard from her since."

Dave's keeping his tone casually neutral, but I can read between the lines. This can't a pleasant topic for him. In fact it's bumming me out as well, and it must be showing, because he says, "Hey, stop making that face. It's not that bad. We seapeeps spend most of our lives solitary or in small groups, it's just how it is."

But humans are social creatures, and he's half-human, isn't he? It can't be fun or even healthy for him to live like that.

"I'm bored out of my fucking mind, okay? That's all. Do you see much around here to do?" He twists upright and waves his hands around lazily. "Swimming, hunting, watching people like a creep, that's all of Dave Strider's daily entertainment program in a sentence. I can't even talk to fish, which you'd think would be one of my mystical merman powers, but no. All they do is-" He opens and closes his mouth vacantly like a goldfish, and I have to stifle a snicker. "-all day long! Smug smack-talking assholes. Who's laughing today, huh? I've got John now: he's fully capable of vocalizing simple sentences _and_ has a short-term memory span of at least ten minutes!"

I'm laughing despite myself and so is he, even if there's a self-deprecatory quality to his chuckles. Heh, Dave's kind of like a less angry Karkat, all verbose and rambly, but joking around instead shouting all the time to cover up his vulnerabilities, and... yeah, that's not really funny.

Whatever he insists, it's obviously not okay with him.

"Hey, Dave," I say, sobering up. He whips around, putting a pause on his scathing commentary for a second. I look him in the eye and give him a light friendly shove. "I'll come around whenever I can. You're not getting rid of me that easily."

I'm not sure why he ever doubted the appetite of any rational human for more awesome real-life merman, but I can tell he's inwardly gratified by my assurances. He thinks he's hiding it, but I see through his nonchalant "yep, cool." He's super pumped for this and it's painfully obvious.

And now that—the way Dave's face lights up from the inside out, brimming with buried hope—that makes my day.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "My eyes are up here," Dave informs me with a snort.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm having so much fun friendshipping these two that I keep forgetting that I'm supposed to be actually proper-shipping them.

I'm armed with a waterproof backpack and proper swimming trunks as I plod out to the beach, surveying the waters for the familiar sight of blonde hair and a sunny smirk. Having to head back and grab dinner cut our talk yesterday short, and I was too tired that night for a second round, but now it's the next day and I'm rested and ready to go. Eight on the clock, as we agreed. He said he'd take me somewhere cooler than more soggy sand, and the anticipation been nagging at me all night. What is it going to be? Mystic ruins? Ancestral tombs? A forgotten temple built by ancient aliens?

Okay, maybe I'm blowing it out of proportion in my mind. It might just be a neat fossil he found or some cliff formation! But _god_ I hope it's an awesome mermany secret.

I finally catch sight of Dave poking out of the water near the crags off to to the rocky end of the beach, waving an arm lazily. Waving back, I wade towards him slightly faster than is socially acceptable and switch to an awkward swim once the sand starts sloping away, my bag dragging uncomfortably against my back.

Dave meets me halfway, and I can't help myself—I'm staring at his tail again, swishing slowly under the waves.

"My eyes are up here," Dave informs me with a snort. I let out a squeak of embarrassment and snap my head back up. Crap.

I must look crazy to everyone else, I realize as I look around. I'm far enough out to the side of the main bay that there's nobody in hearing distance, but to the people milling around the beach it must seem as if I randomly swam out to the middle of nowhere and just stopped here for no reason, talking to empty air. Or does the magical occlusion effect cover me too? None of them look like they're seriously considering phoning the police, at least.

Satisfied for now that no one's going to cart me off to a mental hospital just yet, I turn back to Dave, who's been watching my brief detour into self-consciousness with amusement.

"Hi Dave!" I say, smiling awkwardly. "Did you say you have something to show me?"

"Oof," Dave deadpans, clapping a hand to his chest. "No 'how are you, Dave' or 'what did you have for breakfast, Dave'? I see how it is."

Aw. He's only joking, I think, but now I feel guilty. I don't want to come across like I'm only here for the novelty, even if... well, I kind of am. But that's irrelevant! I'm sure Dave is a very interesting person and that I'll come to appreciate him for who he is instead of for having impossible chimeric biology and a fascinatingly alien sociocultural context.

"What did you have for breakfast, Dave?" I ask, only semi-sardonically. Better late than never, after all, and I do actually want to know. Is it fish?

"Raw fish!" he announces, grinning widely at me. Wow, look at that sharklike teeth. Awesome. And I was right!

"Cool! Do you eat the bones too?" I muse aloud. "Sharks and the like do, I think, but your digestive tract must be at least partly humanlike."

"Nah," he answers, sounding faintly disappointed for some reason. I pretend that I have no clue why. "I just gnaw the flesh off the skeletons and toss the bones."

I cut up fish for a living, Dave! You can't squick me out that easily. Not that he knows that. On second thought, I probably shouldn't tell him that in case it creeps him out, the guy being part fish himself. Or is that racist?

"And how was your day?" I continue cheerfully.

Dave rolls his eyes. "Okay, okay, let's skip the inane pleasantries. It's just needlessly facetious now that you've pointed it out. I know you love me. Follow me and be awed."

Yes! Dave dives, his tail flicking out of the water for a split second before vanishing under the surface together with the rest of him.

I take a deep breath and hurl myself after him, sinking down into the cool full-body embrace of the ocean, but as the sound of the crashing sea drowns out and my eyes adjust, I discover that the merman's corkscrewing down and away into the depths, faster and farther than I can possibly match with my only human anatomy. While I float there, Dave seems to turn around and realize this, swirling to a stop and shooting a half-sheepish half-irritated look at me. I give him a skeptical glare, but I have to head back.

I erupt out of the water, gasping for oxygen. A few seconds later, Dave bursts through the surface next to me, arms crossed.

"Bro, what's with that weak-ass lung capacity?" he groans. "It's not that far."

"Maybe if I were an Olympic swimmer, which I'm not," I scoff. "You don't get to criticize my lung capacity. You can breathe underwater!"

"Look, a literal ten year old could do this," Dave says. "Watch me closely this time and pay attention."

I roll my eyes, but he dives again and I dunk my head down to watch.

This time he spares me the flair and curves straight for the cliff wall, snapping his body straight as he approaches a barely noticeable underwater opening and glides in, vanishing soundlessly into the gap. That's it? I resurface and glance at the rock face above it. There's a thin crack running all the way down, past the waterline into the ocean, and it must open up into the crevice he went through deeper under. A rough estimate tells me Dave entered around three or four meters down, and even there it looked only just wide enough to admit his body.

My mental arithmetic is interrupted by the man himself popping up in front of me again, shaking his dripping curls out of his eyes. "Capiche?" he asks, angling his head.

"Fine," I allow. It certainly looks possible for a healthy and reasonably fit human to make, I'll give him that, though a ten-year-old is a stretch.

Still, it looks kind of dangerous? If I get stuck between the rocks I could easily drown, especially since if it's a gradually-widening kind of thing where I can get wedged. Float too high and I'm trapped, go too deep and I don't have enough oxygen.

"John, come on," he wheedles, reading my hesitation off my face. "I'm here. If you get stuck I can pull you free, and hey, if you run out of air I can breathe some into you. Mouth-to-mouth." Dave winks. Dude, not the time! Though... convincing. From a safety perspective! You can never have enough backup plans, as Jade says. Though she usually says that in the context of carrying five computers on you at all times like a sensible person, which takes away from the solemn wisdom a little.

"I'll give it a go," I concede, warning for good measure, "Don't let me drown." Man, I'm really trusting Dave here, aren't I? For all I know he's a man-eating siren that's going to dash my brains out against a jagged reef and feast on my delicious human flesh.

Ah well. I unbuckle my bag and hand it to him. He has the gills, he can get it through for me.

I inhale as much as my poor ribcage can handle and dive down. Dave trails behind me as I kick towards the place I saw him disappear into earlier, reaching out with wobbly hands and grabbing onto convenient juts to pull myself in. My lungs burn, but they're holding up for now. Emulating what he demonstrated earlier, I press my arms flat against my sides and let momentum carry me through the narrow gap. My heart hitches as my leg grazes something, but it's just some kind of slimy weed.

The walls open up, and then all I see is murky dim water. I jerk around, starting to panic because I'm not sure where to go, but then warm, firm arms close around my waist and pull me towards what I assume is up. Just as my eyes begin to water with strain—not that you'd be able to tell—we break the surface and _aahhhh_...

I gulp down lungfuls of sweet, precious air like a coveted inheritance from a dear departed grandmother vanishing into my bottomless well of student debt.

My head finally begins to clear, the feeble pounding in my chest slowly recovering. Dave's laughing behind me, a pleasant, airy laugh, not a cruel one. His arms are still wrapped around my torso, I register, but to my surprise he has enough of a notion of personal boundaries to keep the rest of him at a polite distance instead of cuddling up like a touch-starved ferret. Once I signal that I'm fine, he disentangles himself from me and lets go.

"See? I told you you could do it," he says, smiling.

I nod, breathless. It was probably a stupidly risky thing to do on the whim of someone I've known for less than a day, but I don't know—I trust Dave. There's something about him that makes me feel like I've known him forever, despite having only talked for a few hours. Hopefully it's not evil magic, but I'm just as screwed either way.

Now that I'm mostly recovered, I finally look around to see what I've gotten myself into this time.

It's some kind of sea cave as I thought, faintly illuminated by the trickle of sunlight through the thin crack that I'd already seen from the outside. Under that is where I came in from, now invisible in the shadows. The cavern's covered in thick moss along its rugged walls, the ceiling showing the beginning of stalactites, dripping quietly with dew. Further into the cave the water gives way to stone sloping steeply up out of the water, leveling to an uneven floor that's peppered with quietly glowing white mushrooms.

As I swim closer to the solid land, I realize that there's more to the place than first met the eye. Not the geology, no—the cave ends pretty quickly a couple dozen feet inland—but what's littered on the shore.

It's like a scavenger's den. There's a number of fascinating items on display there strewn over the rocks, mostly knickknacks like can openers, screwdrivers, jewelry and other things Dave must have either found or pilfered from other humans, but also a few objects set aside in a deliberately cleared-out natural basin that have to be of some sort of special value: a dulled steel ring, an ancient early-generation laptop computer crusted with salt, a dark flat panel thing, a seashell that looks like it's glowing with a weak aura of _anti_-light (I don't know how to describe it, but it's the first overtly magicy thing I've seen!), a pendant on a metal chain.

"Is this..." I trail off, afraid to ease myself onto the ledge, even though that's what I was making my way over to do in the first place. It feels oddly sacrilegious. I settle for clinging on and putting some my weight on on my arms to give my legs a break from treading water. "Is this your home?"

Dave's uncharacteristically skittish as he rounds over to me, his twitching tail sending little subsurface ripples through the shallow water.

"You could say that," he says, shrugging it off. "I put some stuff here, but I'm a free spirit, you know. Exploration and adventure's my lifeblood. Can't let myself be bound to one place like you poor underdeveloped landdwellers or I'll literally keel over like a cute puppy deprived of loving affection."

"Would you really?" I ask, curious.

"Well, yeah," he snorts. "That is to say, melodramatically and in the absence of any real physical danger."

I harrumph.

"Well, I think it's neat," I say. It must be a leap of trust for him to show me this, though I guess he's not in any real danger of me stealing his stuff or anything. If I try he can just drown me when I'm running away through that death gap. Anyway, I decide not to question his strange collection. Not until I get to know him better, at least.

Speaking of which, where's _my_ stuff?

Dave notices me looking around and lifts a hand into the air, my pack dangling wetly from his fingers. Breathing a sigh of relief, I motion for him to toss it to me. I catch it out of the air and, deciding it's probably fine, boost myself over the edge to clamber onto solid ground. I cross my legs and make myself as comfortable I can be with bare skin on hard rock while I unseal the bag.

"So yesterday I was making dinner and wondering if you eat cooked human food," I say casually.

"I do," he confirms. "I'm cool with both cooked and raw, but... I don't actually need to eat? It's mostly for fun, to be honest, and also to terrorize the local fish population. Assert dominance. Look them in the eye as I rend the flesh from their comrades' carcasses. The assholes keep trolling me if I don't show them who's boss."

I beam, deciding to let the "don't need to eat" thing slip for the moment. Science comes later. This was a great idea, then!

"Well, I thought that if you do, I can't imagine that you get your hands on human stuff a lot! So I decided I'd cook some extra last night and freeze some to bring over today. I reheated it this morning, of course."

Dave's mouth opens half a millimeter and stops.

"You..."

His lips can't seem to decide if they want to twitch up or down.

"Sweet," he says casually, but I can see his Adam's apple bob up and down and his eyes tracking the motion of the vacuum flask as I lift it out of my backpack.

"It's a chicken korma recipe I've been meaning to try out for a while, which now that I think about it might be a little heavy for an now? It's super mild, though, so I think you'll be fine."

"I see I'm the guinea pig," Dave jabs, but I can hear the unspoken _thank you_ under his flippant tone. That dumbass.

He shimmies up to the edge of the water and hesitantly takes the spoon and fork I'm offering. I unscrew the cap of the container, emptying out the pent-up steam and filling the air with the pungent scent of curry. The contents got tossed up through our rough handling and the sauce has long since percolated all through the rice I packed at the bottom, but presentation aside, it's still serviceable.

"I..." Dave inspects the utensils in his hands, turning them and shifting his grip around with a lost look. He snorts. "I'm not sure I quite remember how to use a spoon and fork."

"Wow. When was the last time you used them?" I ask. With one of his previous visitors? How long could that be? I still don't know how often he sees humans, but I'm a bit afraid to ask.

"Twelve years," he says, expression dimming. Jesus. He said he's twenty-five yesterday, so that's practically half his life without touching a plate.

"I had a friend when I was a kid," he continues, jabbing a fork into his food. Wait, is this the part where he finally opens up about his past? Not what I expected, but I'm not complaining. "He would bring me food when he came. His guardians couldn't see me—which might have been a good thing, because Jesus Christ that dad was crazier than a tinfoil hat convention—so they thought it was just typical imaginary friend stuff, even if he was a little too old for that. We spent a lot of time together. For a while there I was pretty much living off apple juice and junk food."

I know I'm not going to like the answer, but I can't help myself.

"What happened?" I ask tentatively.

"He moved away." Dave shrugs. My heart sinks. "He was a foster kid. The government decided he was better off elsewhere and not spending half his off-school hours disappearing to the beach. We had our own heartrending private sendoff scene and all, with sobbing and declarations of love and the typical suite of theatrics. It was a real tearjerker, I tell ya. The crying strictly on his side, I'll clarify. What can I say? Even at the wee age of thirteen I was too cool for emotional hysterics. Only stoic nods, bro hugs and assuring shoulder pats from lil' baby Dave."

He makes it sound like he's over it, but I don't believe a word of it. I'm not going to challenge him on it, though. I've known a few people like this; Karkat's one of them too: they downplay everything because they don't want you walking on eggshells around them, but then turn around and get snippy when you accidentally hit one of their sore spots. If I've learned anything, it's that prying at the armor only makes them dial up the bluster and deflection.

"Do you know what happened to him after that? Did he ever come back?" I ask. "You could tell me his name, and then I can try and look him up! Maybe we can find him!"

Dave is quiet for a few seconds, but his answer eventually comes, resigned and defeated.

"Nah."

The hell?

"Why not?" I push back without thinking. To my relief, he doesn't get offended.

"He's probably forgotten about me," Dave says. Before I can object, he quickly explains, "It's how encounters with my kind work. People forget. Memories of the paranormal are intrinsically ephemeral or something: even if you try to hold on, it's a one way street to amnesialand. Once you stay away for a while they start to slip away, and if you go long enough it's inevitable. It's like taking a shit: clench your asshole with the force of a thousand suns all you like, but nature's gotta take its course at some point."

The pit in my gut grows. If it's true, that's... horrible. And I'm not talking about the awful metaphor. "Is that going to happen to me?" I worry aloud.

"Most likely," he admits. "Unless you come by every other day for the rest of your life."

"I don't want to!" I protest plaintively. It's not just about remembering Dave, but also the principle of the thing. I don't like having my mind messed with in any capacity. Am I going to have a week-long hole in my memories after this is over, or will my brain fill it in with made-up mundane stuff? I don't want to do things and have them _unhappen_ from my recollection—what's the point, then, if you finally get to know someone and then immediately forget they exist?

"It's probably for the best," Dave says. "I can't imagine finding out about this secret world of magic and then having to go back to dreary office life and spend the remainder of your days filing taxes in a gray featureless cubicle for the corporate overlords. You'd be stuck with the awareness of an obviously superior race of life forms and yet burdened with the knowledge that you'll never be fit to even polish their fins."

"It's a cruel practical joke, that's what it is! It's weird and creepy and I want nothing to do with that mind-wipey bullshit."

"It's just how the veil is. The first layer of it ensures most people don't see us, and this second one makes it so those that do don't keep the knowledge for long. It keeps the supernatural out of the public consciousness."

I grumble lowly. I suppose it does somewhat make sense from that angle, but it doesn't mean I have to be happy about it. Fish or not, Dave's really fun to talk to and I want to keep that, dammit. I want to be able to come back again whenever I find the time, I want to see if I can introduce him to Jade and Karkat, I... wow, I've gotten attached way too quickly, haven't I? Must be the irresistible magnetism he keeps boasting of. (Though let's be honest, it's also who he reminds me of. Multiple whos.) Still, it's so unfair!

"Are you sure there's no way to stop it?"

Dave hesitates. "There's stories of some people that manage to retain permanent memories, but the way it works is... basically random. In the tales it happens or it doesn't, there's no secret ritual to protect yourself or anything. I wouldn't hold my breath on that."

Ugh. I sigh. Well, maybe I'll be the lucky 1% that gets to keep my memories.

"Eat your curry before it gets cold," I settle for saying, gesturing at the yet-untouched tub of chicken between us. Go, outstandingly unsubtle subject change!

Dave raises an eyebrow, but doesn't call me out on it. He dips his spoon awkwardly into the sauce, bringing the wetted tip to his nose and taking a sniff. Cautiously, as if approaching a dangerous animal, he pokes his tongue out and chances a small lick.

"Rich," he comments. I'm can't tell if that's "good" or "bad" or "I haven't eaten anything that's not raw seafood in years so my discerning palate isn't firing on all cylinders here". Is it too overwhelming? I thought it was on the thick side last night, even from a normal me perspective. Thankfully, he goes in for a second try, forking a piece of meat and maneuvering it into his mouth with frankly adorable focus.

"Mmm." Both of his brows lift, and now _that's_ a good sign. I grin broadly. The seal of approval from the master himself! Yeah, I'm definitely doing this again, I think as I watch Dave dig in with refreshing gusto, rambling about homicidal dolphins between bites as he works his way through the meal with fascinating efficiency.

"What do you think about pastries?" I ask as he stops for air, idly noting that although it seems like he can use submerged gills to oxygenate while speaking, he still needs to refill his lungs to keep making sounds. "Pies? Cake?"

My dad has forever ruined the taste of said desserts for me, but he trained me well in making the darn things. I didn't think about it before, but a reason to flex my baking muscles without having to choke down the end product myself is always welcome.

Dave snickers, though I can't tell what's funny.

"John, I fucking love cake."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Abrupt ending, but fuck it.
> 
> I really hate how I'm opening these chapters, these summary intro paragraphs. It's the kind of thing that immediately turns me off a fic when I see them, but maybe that's just my personal taste in narration style? I know I could restructure it to feed the context in a more elegant and embedded way, but the problem is that I'm too lazy to do it.
> 
> Yes, these notes are just where I gripe and ramble about my writing issues.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Is the heir to a baking empire the key to lifting the evil spell of the nefarious batterwitch?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd say college is kicking my ass, but to be completely honest it's going rather languidly and it's just not realistic to compare my writing productivity during term to out of term.

I stare intently at the merman's moving mouth as he chews contemplatively, fingers brushing against his lips.

"Passable," Dave finally judges.

"_Passable_?" I gasp, outrage dripping from my words.

He nods, eyeing the dark brown crumbs frosted to his fingers. "Yep. Passable."

Look, I haven't been able to taste this stuff without physically gagging since my eighteen-year birthday, but I know for a fact that my baking is better than "passable".

"I can see you licking your fingers," I point out, disgruntled. He's sucking on his thumb, working the remnants of my masterwork off meticulously.

He raises an eyebrow at me. "That doesn't mean anything."

That little shit— I scoot back and lift the platter of chocolate cake from its flat stone pedestal, reseating it a few more feet inland. Dave yowls in protest and scrambles forward, halfway-flopping his upper body with one hand and grabbing at my arm with the other. "I guess you don't want any more, then," I sign mournfully, dodging out of the way. "I'll have to wrap it up again and take it home with me."

"Wait!" Dave complains. "Let me try another slice! For science!"

"You already had one," I say, wagging a finger.

"Reproducibility!" he huffs as he sinks back into the pool. "We never know, it could be a fluke!"

I sniff, unimpressed. "My cake is only for people that appreciate it, not for ungrateful trout."

I know he's kidding, but the judgment still stings. It might be a rush job, but I did spend hours on the thing, going into town specifically to get the ingredients. And I had to figure out how to properly protect it from getting jostled to pieces on the way in here! The least Dave could do is validate my efforts, preferably by prostrating himself at the feet of his new god.

The merman jabs a finger at me. "That is a racist slur."

"Wait, really?" I frown. I raise my hands. "I didn't-"

"No," Dave says, rolling his eyes. "But it could have been, so gimme?"

I glare at him, projecting as much disapproval as I can through my scowl.

He makes a _what?_ shrug.

I lean forward without breaking stern eye contact.

Dave's mouth turns down sadly as he stares up at me, unashamedly trembling his lower lip. Nice try, but being cute doesn't win you sympathy points from me. I've been conned by Jade enough with that trick, though this cute is quite a different kind of cute wait what am I saying.

"No," I state firmly like reprimanding a dog.

This goes on for another few seconds before Dave groans and breaks the staring contest.

"Fine, it's the best fucking chocolate cake I've ever had. Which doesn't say much given I haven't had any cake since I was like twelve, but yeah, it tastes like glory beyond glory, divine angels dancing on the tip of my tongue, Jesus himself's second coming right here in my unworthy mouth. I could keel over on the spot and go to heaven and never approach such levels of pure nirvana."

"Thank you."

Dave keeps going.

"You have enlightened me to the Truth of Cake, and my taste buds will never be the same again. If I died now I would die a happy man, because let's be honest, nothing after this could possibly top that. I have officially peaked in my mid-twenties and it's your fault, John. With the memory of your godly masterpiece irreversibly engraved into my soul, all that's left to explore in what remains of my pitiful life is ever more profound depths of ennui and regret."

Wow, he's wordy. I compared him to Karkat before, but there's some other memory he's twigging, and I can't tell what. Finally, the guy pauses for a breath. "That enough for you, my lord?"

I hmph. "Passable," I throw back at him with a satisfied smirk. With all the pomp of an archbishop crowning a new king, I take the cake I kidnapped and carefully restore it to its old accessible perch.

Dave cuts himself another slice and shovels it into his mouth.

I pull up my knees and hug them to my chest, watching him as he eats. He looks so... energized. Happy, but not outwardly showing it. It's nice seeing him like this, especially if all it takes is food bribery. Is it because you can't find anything sweet in the sea?

"Are you a baker or what?" he says, muffled through the mouthful of cake. "In all seriousness, this is really good. Top tier."

"Oh, no. I don't think I could do that; it's only a hobby. I don't even like cakes! I'm just good at it."

Dave cocks his head quizzically. "Why?"

"Why don't I like them, or why am I good at it?" I ask, tapping my chin. "No, I suppose that answer's the same. My dad was crazy about baking. He roped me into his obsession so I learned all about it, but that meant there were always pies and stuff lying around at home. And guess who got stuck with the cleanup?"

I grimace at the memory. To be fair, he ate his fair share and gave as much away as he could, but a fraction of way too much is still too much.

"Huh," Dave muses, a weird look on his face. "Was _he_ a baker?"

Laughing, I reply, "He was an incredibly boring regular businessman. Just also a cake fanatic in private."

The merman looks oddly disappointed for some reason. Why is he so obsessed with bakers? Does he have a secret baking curse that can be only be lifted by one descended from seven generations of professional bakers? Is the heir to a baking empire the key to lifting the evil spell of the nefarious batterwitch?

"So what _is_ your job?"

Shit. I grope for an answer; I wasn't prepared for this. I can't tell him I _dissect fish_! Why didn't I just agree that I'm a baker? Stupid stupid stupid. What do I say?

"Why do you ask?" I deflect nervously.

The merman chuckles. "What? Is it something embarrassing?" Is my panic that obvious? "Dude, I don't give a fuck if you're a Fortune 500 CEO or a birthday party stripper for hire. As long as it's not, I dunno, experimental marine biology or some shit."

"W... what's wrong with marine biology?" I ask, miraculously keeping my voice level.

Dave is turns to me with a weird look. "You mean, apart from the obvious reason?"

"Uh," I stutter. "Yeah? Is there a non-obvious reason?"

"John," the man states calmly, leaning in and hoisting himself up uncomfortably close to my face. I can feel his breath on my face, and it's doing weird things to me I'm not sure how I feel about. His expression sharpens, growing dreadfully cold and serious.

His next words echo.

"Marine biologists killed my parents."

My heart's beating out of my chest. My lungs stop working. I can't break away from Dave's piercing gaze, my eyes frozen in place. With all the bodily functions slipping my grasp right now, let's throw kidney failure and intestinal distress in there as well. Why not?

Then he splashes back into the water, bursting into uncontrollable laughter. "Holy shit, you should have seen your face!"

What? I almost topple over from the whiplash, my thoughts jarred into a scramble.

"What?" I echo my internal thoughts.

"It was a _joke_, man. Marine biologists didn't kill my parents," Dave says, rolling his eyes and swimming back to the edge of the water. "I don't even have parents."

"What?" I repeat. The fright is bleeding out of me, replaced by growing confusion. What does he mean?

"I'm a mythical being," he laughs. "We don't reproduce biologically. We're created fully formed as children."

"But... but..." I'm at a loss for words. "Where does your DNA come from, then?"

"We don't have any," Dave says. "Magic, motherfucker."

Wait, wait, wait, shelve the career talk panic for a moment. If he doesn't have DNA, then he can't transcribe and make proteins, so no cellular machinery and that means... This explains so much. His biology doesn't make any sense because he _doesn't have biology_, or not in the conventionally understood sense. If his entire existence is unbiological... is that also why he doesn't have to eat?

"Who created you, then?" I ask. "Wouldn't they be your parents? Who raised you?"

"Nobody! We don't work like that," Dave declares, throwing his hands in the air.

I resist the urge to growl in frustration. "How do you work, then? Where do you come from?"

"We arise from the collective unconscious of humanity," he says unhelpfully.

"That doesn't tell me anything."

"I'm giving the birds and the bees talk to a grown man," he groans. "Look, think of reality as the mindscape of a living universe. Your world, of physical beings like humans, is the conscious mind, perpetually ticking along in a defined state, progressing by consistent material laws. My world is the subconscious: the dreaming mind. Mythical doohickeys like me coalesce wholesale from the existential foam, like abstract dreams inspired by your concrete overmind, and manifest in places untouched by the waking world: deep oceans, wild mountains, deep space-"

"_Deep space?_"

"-and basically act like a reflection of humanity's collective unconscious. I'm not a spliced mixture of fish and human DNA cultured into a biological organism: I'm an ensouled bundle of magic that behaves how humans _think_ merpeople should behave. If you carve me up, you'll see what the average human thinks would be inside a fish-human hybrid, even if it would make a real biologist commit suicide in sheer scientific outrage."

So most of him is basically cosmetic? Or no, conceptual?

"That's why people forget about you," I realize. "It's not only _like_ forgetting a dream after you 'wake up', it's _exactly equivalent_. So in that case, magicians are... lucid dreaming?"

"Eh," Dave says, waving his hand. "You're stretching the metaphor. Close enough, though, credit for creativity. My point is that dream people don't have parents. They just appear, already pre-filled with elements stolen from your waking experiences. Same with us."

A horrible thought occurs to me. "But you're real, right? You can't be... 'undreamed' away? Or somehow _change_, just because someone published a worldwide bestseller with a different interpretation of merfolk?"

If he can remember things from his childhood, then that can't be true, right? He'd notice the inconsistencies. Unless his past was also dreamed up, retroactively created as backstory to his "character"—which is incredibly unsettling to think about, so let's maybe not go there.

"Nah," Dave assures. I breathe a sigh of relief. "I stay close to human civilization, so my nature is more... anchored, you could say? If I swam down into the bottom of an ocean trench and stayed there for years and years like a piece of garbage, then maybe what you said might happen, but I can't be retconned away as I am now."

Great. So as long as he-

Wait.

Didn't he say his sister went on a spirit quest to the Arctic and never came back?

A shiver runs up my spine as _another_ horrible suspicion strikes me. I watch Dave closely, but he doesn't seem bothered by where the conversation is going. He would be more upset if his sister got unexisted by the hivemind, right? Maybe I'm jumping the gun here, and it's completely unrelated.

I decide not to press the topic anyway.

"Okay," I say, looking down. "That makes sense. So you don't have parents, and you raised yourself?"

"Me and Rose," he adds dutifully. "Appearified from the metaphysical foam together. By the way, don't think I haven't noticed that you didn't answer the question. What's your job?"

Huh? Oh, right. That.

He's not going to let it drop, is he? That would be too easy, and the world loves making my life difficult. So marine biologists didn't really kill his parents, but he's clearly not a fan of them either. For obvious reasons, as he said himself. If I tell him the truth, I have no idea how he'll react!

"Does it really matter?" I groan.

Dave frowns at me. "Spill already."

Frankly, the thought of going full disclosure is terrifying, and not only because I'm in a cave with exactly one underwater opening that Dave's guarding. I like Dave. I really, really like him, and I don't want to fuck up this weird little thing we've built over these few days. Not only for my sake, either—if this goes wrong, how long will it be before he finds someone else he can talk to? How many more years will he have to wait, all alone? I can't do that to him.

Dave isn't stupid, though: he knows I wouldn't hurt him. Or does he? We've only met for a few days, and I haven't tried to kidnap him or anything, but I have been asking an awful lot of questions about his internal organs. He'd be justified to be slightly worried, and if he comes to the wrong conclusion...

With a start, I realize that he's still waiting for an answer. The length of this silence is creeping past awkward and edging into suspicious.

I can't help it. I panic.

"I'm a chemist," I blurt. I'm already wincing internally as I say the words.

Look, it's close enough to the truth: I did my thesis on effects of pharmaceutical pollution on aquatic life and now work in the same general field, which is technically biochemistry. Flavored chemistry, let's put it that way. Not a lie, simply flavored truth.

It doesn't stop me from feeling like a little kid that just stole a candy bar from the convenience store.

"I don't know a lot about chemistry," Dave admits, shifting around, somehow not catching on to my deception. Or politely ignoring it, alternatively. "Not part of my mystically allocated repertoire."

"It's a living," I say, shrugging. Yep, just pretend nothing's wrong.

"What's your work like?"

Again with the hard questions! I really don't want to spin a massive tale about all the nonexistent chemistry I've been doing. "It is incredibly boring, and you wouldn't want to hear it," I grumble instead, and it's true! The applications are fascinating, but the work itself is drudgery of the worst caliber.

"Your coworkers, then. Friends? Annoying bosses? Loud neighbors waking you up in the middle of the night that you'd love to disembowel with a rusty spork if not for the threat of legal reprisal?" Dave's leaning up against the rock ledge, head rested on folded arms.

I frown. "What's with this interest in my life all of a sudden?"

"Why shouldn't I be? It's been the me show all this time, and I don't know anything about you except that you're a hot chemist on vacation alone. At least I assume you're alone, because if you had a girlfriend in tow when you came here then you've been seriously neglecting your companionship duties. Bros before hoes only goes so far, dude."

Okay, that's a fair point. My paranoia is getting to me. _You wouldn't _need_ paranoia if you owned up to Dave_, some part of me is saying, _Karkat would be yelling at you through the screen right now if this were a movie_. Then I realize that I'm pegging this whole situation as a romcom, which— that is way too hasty and based on many unfounded assumptions!

Darn it. This if fine. Everything is fine. Say something nice and safe that isn't incriminating and also isn't lying, because god knows we've had enough of that. 

"I like to think I'm pretty good friends with everyone else... well, most of the people in my lab. One of my best pals is the genetics guy, his name's Ka-" 

Wait, crap. Karkat's pretty well-known from hosting Deep Blue. I don't know if Dave would know about a documentary show, but if he does, that's going to blow a huge hole in my cover story. 

"-nkri," I finish awkwardly. Is that a real name? I think that's a real name. Oh well, Dave's human (at least human-based) anyway, so I don't think he could tell anyway. "He's hilarious, you have to meet him! Or... maybe not, because if he can't see you he'll think I'm insane?"

Yeah, that idea's down the drain now for the same reason. I can already imagine Karkat furiously reaming me out for this stupid ruse and trying to get him to go along with it. This is all falling apart!

"Then there's my boss who's absolutely insane. She's great. Vr-" 

And Vriska's a Nobel Prize laureate! Why do I have to pick the worst topics? Fair, she's much less famous than she thinks she is because not a lot of people actually follow the prizes, but... 

"Vrasky," I mumble with a wince. That is definitely not a real name, but I'm running with it now. "Vrasky stabbed someone from BP once, you know. Got away with only a warning and community service, plus she managed to keep her job!" 

Dave's face is caught between disbelief and morbid curiosity. Yes, be distracted by implausible stories of greviously injuring oil company representatives! I grin at him as he folds his arms, "Okay, you've got to tell me how she pulled that off," he says. 

I rub my hands. God, I love telling people about the BP debacle of 2017. Now that I have his attention, this I can handle. 

"You see, she had this lawyer friend that studied terrestrial naturalization law back in the day when it was still a thing..." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some stealth world building here.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It never occurred to me that a merman could use the Internet, even though there's no reason he _wouldn't_.

I here to decompress, catch up on my reading backlog and generally laze around having a pleasant time. Instead, I've ended up... well, doing basically the same thing, but mostly in a secret sea cave with a friendly merman.

Its my third day here, two days since I first saw him out in the open sea not-drowning, and I keep meaning to grill him more on how merpersonhood works, but we keep getting sidetracked by crazy tangents on the relative douchebaggery of different species of dolphin. Also, by food. He has so many opinions on everything he gets his hands on that it's entrancing just listening to him blabber on for hours about the inanest of things, and I simply forgot. It must be the indomitable power of friendship thawing my cold, cynical scientist heart.

So, here I am, swinging my legs idly from my ledge in the Davecave as the man himself nibbles on a piece of turkey sausage. I made a real breakfast this time with proper bacon, eggs, toast and who knows what I ended throwing in that doggy bag. I also have a pumpkin pie tucked away in my bag for later, or in case we come across the need for a more tactical deployment.

The other thing I haven't managed to get around to asking about yet is his stuff. Not his stuff, but his _stuff_. The stuff neatly stacked up in the circular depression in the rock, practically radiating an aura of "this is sentimentally important". I noticed it the first time I came here, but didn't ask about it because it felt rude to immediately start snooping the moment I entered his home. Why I still haven't sleuthed out the details by now, on the other hand, is a subtly different story.

I won't lie: I've been sneaking looks at the thing pile all yesterday, and even now I can't help my eyes from drifting over to the assorted jewelry and technological miscellanea. The thing is that Dave's seen me looking, and he knows I know he knows I'm looking, and he hasn't done anything about it! I don't know if that's a sign he doesn't want to talk about it, or if he wants me to ask myself, or if there's even anything special about it at all. Is it a test? A warning? A gesture? All of the above?

Maybe I'm overthinking this. He wouldn't take me here willy nilly if he didn't want me seeing, would he?

Dave's open-mouthed chewing is slowing to a stop as he stares at me contort my face into new and creative formations in unvoiced frustration.

"Something wrong?" he asks, oblivious to my inner struggle.

"No!" I groan.

I have a hunch that all of that has something to do with his sister and/or childhood friend. The tech has to be from a human, but everything else looks very classically mermaidy and mystical. Dave hates talking about his past, I know that much, so does that mean I should just ignore the unsolved mystery, possibly plural mysteries, that he himself planted right in my face? Maybe he's not comfortable opening up of his own volition and wants to be prodded into it, but then what if he really doesn't want to share and I end up coming off as a giant asshole?

Augh, this is all incredibly awkward.

"John?" he asks again quietly.

I sigh, forcing my body to relax. "I'm fine, Dave. Just thinking about something."

"No, uh, I wanted to ask you something."

Huh? I blink, turning to look at him. He's put down the empty tupperware canister and is chewing on a lip, looking unusually reticent. Wow, this has to be serious, then.

After a long silence, he gathers himself and asks, "Do you have a laptop?"

What does he want a laptop fo- oh. I have to stop myself from looking over at his Things as I internally slap myself in realization. If he has a dead computer now, obviously it must have been working at some point, and only broke down over the years! Maybe his friend gave it to him before he left, so they could keep in touch?

...Well, I see why it might be an awkward topic now. _Hey, John, can I borrow your computer to talk to someone else? Yeah, that's fine, thanks, now go sit over in a corner._

It never occurred to me that a merman could use the Internet, even though there's no reason he _wouldn't_. An image of a fish guy hunched over an LCD screen in a cave playing Minecraft pops up in my head. If going through a computer negates his magical invisibility, it might have been his only source of sapient interaction for years until it failed. And going from full web access to being all alone again... I can't imagine what it's like.

"I didn't bring mine, but I have a phone," I suggest.

"Can I borrow it?"

I nod affirmatively and dig into the bottom of my backpack, fishing out a sealed ziplock bag. Opening it, I retrieve the device held within and hand it over, fumbling and almost dropping it into the water in the process. Thankfully, Dave catches it in time. With a sigh of relief, I press my finger to the pad on the back, unlocking the screen.

"Thank you," he murmurs. I say nothing, watching him with eagle eyes.

It's five years old and about due replacing with its dying battery life, but Dave holds my phone with reverential care, wiping his fingers off on the towel I've set on the ground before poking the screen experimentally. It must seem like awesome futuristic technology to someone who hasn't used an electronic device in over a decade. He's trying to conceal his excitement, but his tail's betraying him, twitching at the tip like he's an unusually scaly dog.

What is he looking at?

I lean over to before I register that it might be impolite, but he angles the screen towards me wordlessly.

He's logging into a gmail account. (He has a _gmail account_. How does he still remember the password?) There's a three-digit mountain of unread emails that I can't really see because of the angle, but he goes straight for the search bar, types in an address I can't read, and the list changes—filters—after a blink. His fingers stop. My eyes dart to his and trace his gaze back to the screen. He's looking at the... date column?

Dave sighs.

God, he looks positively miserable. I want to say something, maybe offer some words of comfort, but I don't know enough about what's going on here to really do a thing.

The merman presses the recents apps button, frowns, and then taps the home button. He swipes left and right, looking vaguely confused at the interface. "Do you have Pesterchum installed?" he finally asks.

Pesterchum? I haven't used that ancient in ages, and they decommissioned the web client just two years ago, so I don't think so.

"I can download it," I offer. That only seems to make him slump more.

"Never mind," he says. "He wouldn't... ah. It's okay."

I don't like this Dave I'm seeing.

He pokes Typheus instead, his face brightening in minor pride that he guessed the web browser correctly. I smile faintly, which he catches and responds to by flipping me off. He stabs the URL bar and, with an adorable scrunch of concentration, tries to type out a web address, going back to correct himself a few times as he does his best to remember how it goes. I can't see clearly what he's entering in there, but he evidently reaches the end and presses the go button.

The keyboard goes away. The page goes blank as my phone struggles to download data off my crappy two-bar 3G connection.

An eternity later, the website loads.

Eye-rending yellow, magenta and blue scorches my retinas.

Oh no. It's a sight I haven't seen in years, and the memories it brings back... wow. All I can think is _geez, Dave has bad taste_. Not that I'm one to judge, of course. Is it weird that I find it kind of cute?

"You read Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff?" I question, incredulity dripping from my words. "My god, this explains why you're so awful."

"I'm surprised you know what it is," he snorts, scrolling down.

"I was unlucky enough to have it seared into my brain at a young age," I grumble. "Also, one of my colleagues won't stop talking about it."

Karkat is so weird. He insists he despises the silly webcomic with a "hate so pure and hot it would consume your sad underdeveloped human think pan to even contemplate", but gets ridiculously offended when other people talk trash about it in the "wrong way". Then he denies it when people ask him if he's a fan, even though he so obviously is! He's always like that with everything. The mental gymnastics he's capable could win Olympic medals.

I peer over as Dave scrolls down. "You're out of luck if you're hoping for more to binge, though. The artist disappeared in 2010. He just vanished off the Internet one day and never came back."

In more ways than one, too. It was so long ago and I like to think I've gotten over it, but the memory still stings. We never met in person, or even exchanged names, but... well, I thought that we were closer than that.

"Yeah, it would be somewhat disturbing otherwise," Dave says offhandedly.

I only ever found Jade in the end, and while she's great company and one of my best friends now, sometimes gaming with her just dredges up nostalgia of the old days when there were more of us. Wait, what did he say?

I turn to face him. "Eh?"

"It's honestly funny that it's still up."

I wave a hand in from of Dave's face. "Hey, hey! What do you mean?"

"Well, since it's my comic and I haven't touched a computer in a dozen years, it would be pretty spooky if it somehow updated itself without me knowing."

My brain burps and shuts down.

"What?" I manage to squeeze out. My jaw hangs ajar. "You're TG?"

I... there's no way. But it makes _so much sense_. That's why he's so familiar, why we clicked so quickly. All of this time... goddammit. My spirits are simultaneously sinking and lifting, doing their best to convolve my emotions into a constrictor knot around my heart.

Dave cocks his head at my crumpling face. "I know you're starstruck, but don't you think that's possibly an overreaction?"

"You're TG?" I utter. "You swear you're not messing with me?"

"Yeah?" he answers, frowning slightly. "What about it?"

I can't help it. My arms fly out and snap around his neck, dragging him close as I bury my face into his hair. The merman yelps, confused, but tentatively returns my hug. I hear my phone clatter to the ground, but I can't find it in myself to care. I'm a grown-ass adult, I thought I was over it, but now it's all flooding back like I'm thirteen and playing co-op RPGs on my rickety old PC again.

"I'm EB," I croak.

Dave freezes.

"Holy shit," he says. "Holy shit. I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry."

He's clinging back to me three times as hard now.

"Sorry doesn't cut it, you asshole!" I shout into him. "Why didn't you tell me? At least warn me, _hey I might vanish without a trace some day, don't worry too much about it_. Would that have killed you?"

I can hear him choke. "You're right. I was an idiot. I knew, I knew my buggy piece of crap wouldn't last forever, but I thought that if I didn't acknowledge it then it wouldn't happen, and... fuck, it's a shit excuse. I'm the biggest, most gaping pus-stained asshole in the universe. You deserved better."

"I still have that bunny you sent me," I say, stifling a laugh. "It's in my apartment, on top of my dresser. I don't even like Nick Cage anymore."

Dave tenses under me. "I... I lost the shades. It got washed away by a storm wave four years ago."

"That's okay. That's okay," I repeat. "_Fuck_. I'm such a mess. I met GG, you know that? Jade Harley, field archaeologist extraordinaire. We're still friends. You can meet her."

Then I realize who I'm talking to—what I'm talking to—and flinch. Dave makes a low, unhappy grumble in his throat.

"That's why you insisted on the no names thing, is it?" I whisper. "You thought if we knew, it might trigger the filter. You might not be able to talk to us anymore."

"Yeah," he whispers. "It's happened before."

"It's okay," I insist. "I can see you now. I'm going to fucking remember you, I swear to god. I won't forget. I _didn't_ forget, doesn't that count for something? The magic can't retroactively take that away."

Dave withdraws, horror plain on his face. I immediately know that I said the wrong thing.

"What if it does?" he says. "What if now that you know, you go away, and you... you can't even remember that?"

"No. It's not going to happen. It won't."

"It could. There's no unopening Pandora's box, dude. Sickness and death and all that shit spilling out into the mortal world. Retroactive amnesia takes no prisoners."

My fists ball up. "We'll find a way."

"You're not being realistic."

"You're being unreasonably fatalistic about something we don't even know is going to happen!" I shout back. Dave rears back at the intensity of my exclamation. "I'm not going to forget you, we're going to be friends forever, I'm going to introduce you to everyone and _that's final!_"

The merman sinks, his chest disappearing into the water, his hands the last to slip away into the shadowy depths. For a second I'm scared that I might have overwhelmed him with all of this candid emotion, but a stream of air bubbles to the surface not a second later. He's just taking a breather. Underwater. Because he has gills.

I myself bury my face in my hands, pushing my glasses up to my forehead. I want to laugh. Dave's TG. I spent so long looking, months of trawling the Internet for clues, and now so many years after I gave up, here he is where I least expected him. What are the odds? I knew Dave seemed oddly reminiscent of someone, but now that it's been all out in the open, I can see echoes of TG's chaotic spirit reflected the man's every move. Growing up hasn't changed him that much.

So TT has to be Dave's enigmatic sister, then. Rose. I roll the sound of the name around my tongue. I would once have given anything to see her stream of purple prose and pseudo-intellectual babble again, and though time has dulled the edges of that yearning, I'd still like to meet her for real some day and catch up. Now I see why she used to insist that she could never be a real psychologist. Not a deep-seated inadequacy complex, it turns out.

The soft splash as Dave emerges from the water reaches my ears, followed by rustling gravel as he pulls himself up closer.

"I thought you might have been hurt in an accident," I say without looking up. "You acted, but I know you wouldn't have forgotten my birthday. The days dragged on and I kept coming up with more and more horrible things that might have happened to you, but months without a word from you and I finally accepted reality. That either you and TT ditched us without a trace, or..." I suck in a breath through my fingers. "...you died."

"I'm sorry," Dave says again.

"I felt so horrible because part of me hoped it was the second one."

"I'm sorry," he repeats.

"Some nights I dreamed that I would find you logged in to Pesterchum one day and you'd tell me you went into a year-long coma and just woke up."

He puts a hand on my knee.

"I kind of want to find that friend you had and punch him in the face."

"He spent most of his savings buying me a computer and a solar charger," Dave defends. "He didn't have a choice. Not about leaving, and not about... forgetting."

I sigh. "What happens if I write a note for myself saying 'Dave Strider is a person that exists and has a fish tail' and pin it on the wall?"

"Doesn't work," he says simply.

"How does that- never mind, it doesn't matter." All of my interest in learning about mer magic has evaporated in the face of this revelation. It all seems pointless now, like I've been playing in this dream bubble and all of a sudden reality came and popped it.

The two of us sit and float there in contemplative silence as we try to get our heads around everything that happened. There's not enough time, I realize. I can't let this slip away, especially if there's a chance I might forget about everything the second I leave town, but I'm going home by the end of the week. I still have vacation days left, but HR won't settle for less than two weeks' notice and I'm still practically fresh off my probation, so there's no way they're letting me extend my leave this far into it.

I don't want to think about it. Right now I have everything I want right here in this cave. But if I want to keep any of it, I need to figure something out.

Something presses at my right leg, and I look down. Dave's hugging it and resting his head against the side of my knee, letting the rest of his body dangle bonelessly in the water.

"Tail tired?" I ask, cracking a smile.

The merman looks up consideringly.

"Nah," he replies.

I have this sudden urge to drop into the water and give him a real hug, not the half-body displaced head hug from earlier, but the geometry of the seabed here means I'd have to be treading water and then it would be awkward and not fun at all. I still want to do it anyway.

Maybe back at the beach.

"You had a crush on me when we were teens, didn't you." I roll the sentence out gently. Not an accusation, not a question.

"Yeah," he mumbles, dropping his clinging arms and bobbing away with a flick of his tail. "I can back off if you want. I know I've been hounding you-"

"No," I blurt without thinking. Dave looks up tentatively. "It's fine."

My hastily offered approval seems to do the trick to reinvigorate him, for better or worse. He perks and swims closer, an analyzing expression forming on his face.

"Hold on, does that mean 'it's fine' as in 'I'm not offended', or fine as in 'keep doing it'?" he asks with the beginnings of a smirk.

I groan, and his smirk grows wider.

It's not an unfair question, though, and now with an better idea of the looming deadline and heightened stakes, it's now or never to get a grip on what's running amok in my rebellious brain.

What do I want out of this?

It took me until I was sixteen to realize what had been going on with TG and what in retrospect were playful flirtations that flew completely over my head. By then it was far too late to do anything about it, the reclusive online persona already gone for years. Then it took two more years until I was eighteen, in college and meeting so many other people my own age for the first time, before I realized that I had probably liked him back—or would have, if I'd gotten my head out of my own ass to inspect my feelings at the time.

As for Dave, he's charming and funny, maybe not _nice_ in the most conventional sense of the word, but thoughtful when he needs to be, and it's obvious he truly cares. And now I'm mixing up my TGs and Daves, but they're literally the same person, so I don't have the willpower to care. He's also easy on the eyes for a half-fish person, which now that I think about it is probably the cultural stereotype of statuesque mermaids at work, but it's not like real pretty biopeople aren't a meaningless combination of genetics and exercise anyway.

To be honest, when it comes down to it, what my gut wants is simple: I don't want him to stop.

Dave, not hearing a denial, swims up and rises out of the water, gripping the rock on my two sides as handholds. "Well?" he asks, pressing closer and hovering his face inches from mine eagerly. 

"The latter," I admit with an exhale.

There it is, out in the open. Dave Strider is fully authorized to seduce my pathetic pants off if he wants. He blinks, as if not expecting that answer.

"Oh," he says dumbly. A beat later, his mouth curves up. "Well, uh... does that mean. Uh."

"Yes," I interrupt, rolling my eyes. "Yes, uh."

"Okay." Dave pauses. His usual eloquence is nowhere to be seen. "So."

I make a snap decision.

Leaning forward, I press my lips to his.

He freezes.

Then his elbows give out and he falls away backwards with a frustrated yelp, smacking loudly into the water and splashing water into your face and glasses. He splutters and surges back out of the pool, spitting brine from his mouth. It's ridiculous. I can't help but break into laughter, and Dave quickly follows, chortles filling the cave. The tension's gone out of the room. I touch a finger to my lips, licking them unconsciously as the edges of my lips twitch.

Salty. I'm not sure what I expected. He literally swims in saltwater.

"Rude," he makes out, but the amusement in his voice says otherwise.

"Idiot," I return with a grin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And suddenly, a plot twist.
> 
> Also, this is now technically post-Sburb in the dumbest possible way.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vriska, she's... a personality.

"Hey Karkat!" I call as I stroll into the lab, snapping gloves on from the box on the door side table. He's stooped over the fume hood, trying to shake the last drops out of a measuring cylinder. "How's it going? Did anything burn down while I was gone?"

"Godawfully, as always," he grunts, clacking glassware down on the bench. "Rotary stratifier two broke. We ordered a new one, but until it gets here you're going to have to wallow in the sodden hoofbeast muck with the rest of us peons and our pitiful 50mL tubes."

"That's awful! But it'll be desk work for me the next few days, at least," I say with a frown. "Emails to read, papers to edit, you know how it goes. I still have to get back to Terezi on the DO numbers she gave me."

"Oh?" Karkat raises an eyebrow. "Why the fuck are you here laying waste to my perfectly fine Egbertless morning, then?"

I chuckle and give him my best innocent look. "Just popping by run some tests on a thing, maybe borrow the PCR and sequencer. Non-work related!"

Truth be told, I was hoping he wouldn't be here yet, either that or too knee-deep in the zone to notice my puttering around. Instead, the universe seems to have conspired to plant me in the one tiny window when he's only getting set up and still responsive to stimuli. It's a rare occurrence that he actually reacts to my deliberately over-bubbly morning greetings, even if this is my first day back.

"A thing," he repeats after me, eyes narrowing to blood-red slits.

"Something cool I found on vacation," I pass off. I pull this enough that I hope—I pray—that the guy will let it go. "Probably nothing, but I'll let you know if I do find anything. It's not going to be paper-worthy either way."

"Vriska's going to eat you alive," he states skeptically.

I shrug. "Only if she finds out!"

He grumbles, but doesn't make any further objections. Karkat's not going to rat me out, he likes me! You can tell by how grudging his tolerance of my existence is, and I'm just saying, I hold the world record for number of times accidentally contaminating his dishes without being clubbed with a blunt object. He's practically in love with me by Karkat standards.

"Terezi's going to sniff you out in seconds," he informs me.

Ah, right. A veiled reminder that she's site-visiting today. Karkat's a bro. "I'll keep an eye out," I promise.

Making my way over to the solvent shelves, I finger the little bottle in my pocket. I'll be honest—I have no idea what I'm doing, or what I might even find if I get away with this. There's a 0% chance of me publishing anything I might discover, like I told him, but scientific curiosity compels me to at least shoot my shot at shedding some light on this absolute bullshit. Besides, just having a blood type on file will be a useful reference by itself, in case of an emergency.

I didn't get a lot of the stuff, so I'll have to ration it out. Even if I get clean amplification going for the DNA I might have to borrow Kanaya's stuff for some of the tests, and find a free slot on the sequencer to run my sample if I want to do barcoding, so it'll be tricky. But doable.

I'm snapped out of my thoughts by the sound of a door slamming against the wall from all the way down the hallway.

"Oh, man," I mutter. Only one thing that could be.

"_John!_ Get in here!" I hear Vriska shout in the distance.

Five minutes back at work, and I'm already missing the beach. Those blessedly clear skies, the sparkling water rushing over your feet, fishy dudes in your lap critiquing your questionable taste in video games— okay, well, that last part isn't technically a beach thing, but close enough. Hey, I'm entitled to some daydreaming after all that happened.

All of that is hundreds of miles away now, but the good news is that—so far, at least—I remember.

* * *

It wasn't without effort.

I committed our last few days together to memory, even dusted off my undergrad secretarial skills and wrote up honest-to-god minutes for some of those conversations, mostly the more technical ones about biology and mysticism. More than once under the warm lamplight of my rented room my fingers crawled to a stop over a battered keyboard, reluctant to keep going as my reconstructed dialoglogs began drifting unwittingly into more personal territory. There are things that you simply don't put into writing, or that if you do, belong at least on yellowed pages in padlocked trunks and not .txt files on the company-issued laptop.

An hour I burned trying to sketch Dave's face from a photo I took, but my earnestness was no match for a depressing deficiency in artistic talent: I ended up throwing the disfigured scribbles into the bin. Then I fished them out and slipped them in with the rest of my travel documents, because anything that might jog recollection I was keeping, even if Dave said it wouldn't matter.

We decided to spend an afternoon out on the beach, hoping that setting the scene in a more human venue would help to anchor the memory. It was a clouded day and edging on the chilly side, not the idyllic set I was hoping for, but we made ourselves comfortable in the shallow waters regardless. We weren't there for the weather. This was the day after we unearthed our unexpected history, one day after, well... you know.

We had questions, more than we could possibly have the time to cover in the few days left to us. Naturally, Dave zeroed in on the most pertinent one to start us off.

"Did you ever finish Sburb?" Dave asked, curled up next to me in the sand. The sea was lapping up to our waists, and I was watching the water slosh over his scales. The way it trickled back down along the crevices was kind of cool, and I was so distracted I almost missed the question.

"No," I sighed. "How could we? With two players left? We didn't have the classpects for half the mandatory quests for a scratch run and we'd already wrecked the neutral route. Maybe Yaldobath could have thrown us a bone, but really, it was doomed from the second you disappeared."

"You could have started a new two-player game," Dave ventured.

"We did," I admitted. "I tried speccing as Heir of Time and Knight of Time, but it didn't work out. I guess the personality test wasn't all bullshit in the end? And before you ask, we did try a void game, but neither of were was feeling it, so... yeah. Didn't work out."

"Sandbox doesn't cut it after playing half the story, huh?"

"That too, but it's more that..." Another sigh escaped me. I paused, trying to find a way to word the same sentiment in a not ridiculously cheesy way, but... "It wasn't the same without you," I finished.

I don't know how long we just sat there in the shallows, listening to the sound of the sea. Dave's hand found mine in the sand, our fingers intertwining without a word. Eventually, Dave spoke up again.

"How long until you go?" he muttered.

I swallowed. "Three days. Supposedly. I'm going to ask my boss for an extension."

"Is she going to give it to you?"

I didn't have an answer for him. Even now, walking into her office three days after the fact, I'm still not sure what came of that conversation in the end.

* * *

Vriska, she's... a personality.

"Finally done slacking on company dime?" the Serket demands, somehow managing to make spinning around in her chair at 40 rpm not look childish for a fully-grown adult.

Paid holiday, Vriska. It's called paid holiday.

"Yeah," I say with a nod, already braced for the barrage of mostly-insincere verbal jabs. It's an acquired skill, interacting with her. "I'll get on the oxygenation data by the end of today, don't worry about it."

"Come on, don't be like that," she snorts. "I'm just checking in on my favorite wage slave! I'm a responsible employer, you know, all concerned for your precious mental health."

I suppress a cough. "It might help if you, perchance, didn't call us your wage slaves?"

"The truth will not be denied, Egbert," she declares. "We are all wage slaves today in the loving embrace of great human capitalism."

"You're in a good mood," I comment.

She steeples her fingers, and it might be my imagination, but the crimson orbs in her eye patch seem to glow a shade brighter. The only thing keeping me from leaning away is that I can tell the look in her other eye isn't anger—it's _excitement_.

"The grant got approved," she tells me, a smirk breaking across her face. "We're getting paid, bitches."

"Wait—_the_ grant? The Crocker one?"

Vriska nods, grin widening at my appreciative whistle. Yikes. Even with her shiny gold medal pulling weight, scoring one of Betty's big ones is nothing to laugh at. There's a reason an ex-con in her twenties got put in charge of a world-class research facility, and that reason is only around 20% blackmail and mind-control.

"Anyway, I didn't call you in here to gossip about LOLAR's fantastic funding situation," she barks, clapping her hands. "You're underallocated. I'm putting you on the GI epigenetics project with Kanaya."

Ah. My pleased holds, but my spirits plummet. That's going to put a wrench in my plans. I'd been hoping for a lighter week to get started, but things like this don't slip past a Serket, do they? She hunts down operational inefficiencies like a heat-seeking missile. Though...

"Kanaya's back?" I question.

"Will be," Vriska corrects. "I guess she finally got tired of freezing her butt off in Greenland. Took her long enough. How long has it been? Seven months?"

"Six."

"Yeah, she'd better have a really fucking good report on those thermophiles when she gets back! As for you, go and do some reading or whatever. You know where the reference papers are, you're a big boy. Questions? Complaints?"

Dozens, actually, but I know she's just going to tell me to make something up or ask Karkat as usual, so there's no point in wasting both our time. I sigh, penciling another entry into my mental to-do list that's growing taller by the second. "Nope. Loud and clear."

"Shoo, then. Out of here," she says, motioning me towards the door with her manicured hands. "I have things to do, irons to tend, plans to furnish."

I turn to leave, praying it's all, but only make a few steps towards the door before Vriska calls out again, stopping me mid-stride.

"One more thing," she says haltingly.

I look back questioningly.

"That text you sent me. What the hell was up with that? It's not like you. At all."

I hesitate for a moment, considering making up some elaborate excuse, but the unimpressed glare being shot at me tells me she's not going to believe a word that comes out of my mouth. In the end, I settle for a generic deflection.

"It's nothing," I say. "Forget about it. Won't happen again."

* * *

\-- ectoBiologist [EB] began pestering arachnidsGrip [AG] at 13:14 --  
  
EB: Hey Vriska. I'm really sorry, but something came up and I might have to extend my holiday for a few more days. I know this is against HR policy, but I'll owe you a huge one if you could let it slip just this once. I promise that it's really important! I wouldn't ask you for something like this for any other reason.  
AG: What the fuck???????  
AG: You know it's crunch time over here on the January pu8lications! I alr8dy have your work planned out for all of next month!  
AG: Who died? I know all of your friends, John, and I know for a fact none of them kicked any type of human cleaning receptacle. Don't give me that crap.  
AG: Is it a "family emergency" again? Fucking 8rilliant, these 8ullshit diversity policies. God, fuck Pyrope.  
EB: It's a private matter. But I swear it really is incredibly urgent. I would really appreciate it if you could do this for me. Please.  
AG: Okay, first of all, stop typing like that. It doesn't make you look good. Ut's stupid and annoying and super disconcerting. Second, I'm not hearing a yes on that!!!!!!!! It wasn't a rhetorical question! Tell me what the hell is going on.  
EB: ok, but i'm sorry, you wouldn't believe me if i told you. look, deduct it from my pay. i'll work the weekend when i get back to make up for the lost time, off the clock. you know i can do it.  
AG: If you're not (a) human pregnant, (b) attending a surprise corpse party, or (c) able to give LITER8LLY ANY PASSA8LE EXCUSE, then stop w8sting my time, Eg8ert.  
EB: uh, human males don't get pregnant, vriska.  
AG: Sarcasm, smartass. Of course I know that! Have you forgotten who you're talking to? >::::[  
AG: And the answer is NO!!!!!!!!  
AG: If I don't see you on Monday I'm going to fly over to whatever useless 8ackwater dump you're holed up at and I will kick your ass all the way back to Cam8ridge!  
  
\-- arachnidsGrip [AG] disconnected at 13:31 --  


"Fuck," I cursed, glaring at the cerulean text on my screen. Dave cocked his head at me. "She said no," I answered the unspoken question.

The merman grunted. "It doesn't change that much. It was a matter of time anyway."

"We're getting you a phone," I decided, fingers tightening on my phone. "And a power source. I'll have to do some research on that. Where did you buy a solar-powered battery charger all the way back in... what was it? Twenty ten? Wow."

"Fuck if I know," he snorted.

I sighed. He was right. Three days, ten days, it was the same in the big picture. The looming specter could only be put off, never escaped.

We didn't have much time left.

Theoretically, yeah, we could talk over the web. I could come back over weekends. Theoretically it wasn't the end of the world. But all of that was moot if I left town and all of my memories of this place, my entire conception of this man in front of me, everything slipped away like quicksand through trembling fingers. There was no telling what would happen, or as Dave insisted, _when_ it would happen. It was inevitable, he stated in no uncertain words.

It wouldn't stop me from trying.

Part of me wanted to say fuck it, let Vriska throw her hissy fit, that some things were more important than appeasing your boss. The rest of me coughed and reminded that rebellious fragment of the student loans I had to pay off, the apartment I had to rent, and the painful reality that this absurdly well-paying gig and a bitter ex's tender mercies were the only thing keeping my payments on track right now.

I knew that it might be one the last chances I had to tear the band-aid off if things didn't go well. Another might argue that that's exactly why I shouldn't be putting a wedge between us at this stage, that maybe leaving the happy illusion alive would be the best for both of us, but if I never came back, Dave deserved the truth.

At the very least, being mad at me might take the edge off the hurt.

"I have a confession to make," I said, swallowing. Dave looks up at me, and the sight of his shaded eyes peering up almost robs me of the will to go through with it.

The next words are like pulling teeth.

"I'm not really a chemist."

* * *

"What did she want?" Karkat asks as I let the door swing shut behind me.

"Apparently Kanaya's coming back and I'm being put on her project," I sigh.

"Oh, yeah, you missed the email on that. The expedition finally wrapped up."

"One piece of good news, at least," I grumble as I trot to the junk cupboard and yank it open with a sharp tug. "Haven't seen her in a while."

"You'd better log that shit you're using!" he yells.

I flick on the flashlight on my phone and peer around the dusty bowels of the cabinet, finally locating the antibodies and carefully picking them out of their rack. Great, now I just need a slide. "You're saying that like these are on the books in the first place," I point out.

"I don't give an egregious fuck what horrifically illegal drug operation you've gotten yourself into, if I drag my sleep-deprived corpse in here tomorrow morning and find that you've managed to somehow empty our pyridine tanks _again_ in the time it took me to take a piss, I will flip my shit harder than Gordon Ramsay's most sincere attempt at driving automated skillets out of the market."

It's one of Karkat's more irritable days, it looks like.

"Sure," I groan.

"_John_," he growls loudly, and I jump, almost dropping a flask. What is it with everyone in this place today? There's a sourer edge to his voice now, less the typical empty vitriol he throws around.

Turning and rolling my eyes, I mumble, "Fine, fine, I'll update you on any dramatic and unexpected changes to our chemical inventory if or when they happen."

"John," Karkat repeats, switching off his burner and fixing his eyes on me. "What happened?"

Shit.

My face stays blank, but my stomach does a pirouette in my abdomen. Why does Karkat always choose the worst times to be oddly perceptive? And why am I the victim of his social brainwaves every single time?

"What do you mean?" I ask, trying to telegraph nonchalance.

He lowers his voice. "You are by far the shittiest liar I have ever met in my long and tortuously convoluted life, John Egbert. This isn't like all your normal bucket-guzzling pet projects. What the fuck are you up to?"

"Dude, nothing's going on!" I scoff, lowering the glassware in my hands. "You're overreacting again."

"Are you in trouble?" he demands.

"_No_-"

"Do you even know how to destroy a body, you moron?"

Holy fuck, is he serious? I eke out a nervous half-chuckle, wringing my hands. "Are you offering to help?" I joke, immediately regretting the words as they exit my mouth. Karkat pins me with his gaze, steel in his eyes. Sweat beads on the back of my neck. Jesus christ. He's absolutely serious. On one hand, I'm gratified, on the other... does he have that low an opinion of me?

I could totally dispose of a body if I had to.

"I do not need your help to bury a body," I slowly state. "Or burn it, or dissolve it in a vat of acid." Wait, was that what he thought I was doing? "I don't need a lawyer. There isn't a cabal of murderous clowns out for my blood. I have a weird hunch about something _strictly academic_, and that's all."

The staring contest drags on for several more seconds before he finally breaks the stalemate and glances away, grudgingly appeased by my firm defense. He stalks slowly back towards his bench, shooting me lingering looks of suspicion as he goes.

"It's good to have you back," he reluctantly admits.

I smile. "Aww, I missed you too."

"But, hey—" I add as an afterthought, drawing another irritated glance. "I'd appreciate it if you kept this quiet. Just for a little bit, you know? I don't want to look stupid if it doesn't pan out."

For a second, it looks like he wants to say something again, but the words seem to die in his mouth.

"Too late for that," he ends up grumbling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Picking up the pace here. Characters show up, things happen. Tenses are abused.
> 
> Also, Homestuck2. What the actual fuck.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I lift my head and drag my fingers down my face, as if I could somehow tear down this defacement of probabilistic law with my bare hands if I thought it hard enough. The next words to come from my mouth are practically cosmically preordained, so memetically ingrained in my characteristic vernacular that it had become a deterministic certainty from the moment this dumb revelation became a thing.
> 
> "_THIS IS STUPID._"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the inactivity. I haven't had much time recently, but I managed to crank this out.
> 
> I don't think anyone would be that offended, but I'll clarify that Karkat and John's views are their own, and are not meant to represent, criticize, mock or support my opinion or any other person's. It's not political; you'll figure out what I mean.

An inarticulate strangle of rage passes over from the other side of the table as I set myself down.

"_Dark gods have mercy on my tormented soul, the blithering sacks of hernial pus waddling down at What Pumpkin have done it AGAIN_."

My eyes flick up briefly to catch the angry troll yelling at his phone screen. Karkat's worked up at something, news at eleven—what catches my attention, though, is the particular studio he's vehemently decrying this time around.

"Huh?" I question intelligently.

My tablemate's head jerks up, and a second later there's a phone shoved in my face. It takes a moment for my eyes to focus on the pixels, and even then, another few seconds to parse what I'm being shown.

"Sburb 2?" I read out. "Wait, is this legit?"

I can scarcely believe what I'm seeing. It's been years since the last big update, and radio silence for months. I though they were moving on to new projects, but apparently not!

"Hussie really is hell-bent on running this franchise into the ground, isn't he?" Karkat growls. "_Sburb 2: Beyond Canon_. Listen to that pretentious muck. What the fuck is this?"

I take the phone from the outstretched hand, and scroll down with a finger, letting my meal lie for the moment. "Huh. It says they're bringing in devs from the modding community. Decentralizing Sburb? 'Beyond Canon is redefining game development and the meaning of vanilla gameplay'. Hey, this looks really cool! Is there a trailer, or is it just the announcement?"

I flick to the top the page again. No video, but it looks all legit and official and everything.

"What a crock of shit. They should have let Sburb die, not drag out to this sick mockery of a franchise to its bitter, disfigured end. If this is just going to be more of the godforsaken DLC-not-to-be-named, I'm out. Fuck this."

"I liked Epilogues," I protest weakly, going back down and picking up where I left off. I'm still scarcely able to believe my eyes. An official Sburb 2!

I didn't think I'd ever see it happen, but there it is, with a spiffy yellow logo and Steam page fresh off the presses. I haven't played in ages, and not once with a proper party ever since Dave lost contact, but all that stuff with meeting him again really hit me good with the nostalgia. I don't usually buy preorder as a policy, but maybe I'll make an exception just this once? The old alchemy itch is rearing up again even as I think about it. I wonder if Rose's ancient GameFAQs walkthrough is still up?

...On second thought, looking at that again might just make me feel worse.

Karkat blinks, as if surprised that I actually responded to one of his pissy rants for once. "Of course you would," he scoffs hesitantly. "You're all for that depressing existential psychobabblery. How much do you bet that Moonswap Act 2's getting another six-month delay for this steaming pile of horrible idea?"

I roll my eyes. "They're not even the same dev teams! And Friendsim and Prospitquest were good, I don't know what you're complaining about."

"For lightweight roguelikes," he grumbles, but doesn't deny. "Doesn't solve the state of utter shit that's taken over the main line these days."

"You are such a downer!" I snort, rolling my eyes. "I, for one, am looking forward to this."

Karkat faux-gags. "No wonder you dated Vriska. What you lack in IQ you make up for with criminally despicable taste."

What I'm curious about is Karkat's relationship with the game. How have I known him for this long without finding out about this? I mean, _I_ don't talk about it because of the whole Dave and Rose thing I don't like to talk about, but he doesn't look sound like he has that excuse.

"I didn't know you were a Sburb fan," I pose tentatively.

"I'm not," he snaps. "Sburb is shit and so is Andrew Hussie."

"Yeah, well, that's what you say about Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff too," I garble through a mouthful of potatoes.

Karkat crosses his arms defensively. "That is also shit."

"Man, come on, let's not do this," I groan. "Do you play?"

You know, with me, Jade, Dave and Karkat, we have all it takes for a proper run. Maybe after so long mucking around in freeplay I'll finally be able to pull off a win! Dave doesn't have a device that can run Sburb, but that's easily fixed, then I'll just have to catch Jade when she's not in the middle of an expedition... but then I'd have to explain to her how I found Dave and all of this wibbly wobbly memory magic stuff, and that opens a whole other can of worms that we're not quite ready to crack open quite yet. Crap.

"Play?" he sniffs. "I _destroyed_ the game the year it came out. Twelve-player permadeath victory, first try. It was a light walk in the vegetated recreational space."

"Woah," I say, raising an eyebrow. The nubby-horned troll smirks at my look of grudging respect.

That's honestly impressive, and Karkat isn't one for empty brags—not anymore, at least. Sburb is infamous for how horrendously tough its permadeath (or as they call it, "only real") mode is, and a twelve-player run? The prototyping system means that the more players you have the harder the game, and without mods, twelve is as bad as it gets.

Of course, that's not the source of my surprise. No, Karkat being unexpectedly competent despite his infinite well of ill temper is more of the same old news. This reaction is at something else.

"I didn't know you were on speaking terms with that many people," I muse.

Karkat's face immediately devolves into a much befitting scowl.

"Fuck you, Egbert."

* * *

It took a while for me to explain what on Earth I was going on about, but when I was done with the very incriminating confession, all Dave had for me was an underwhelming, "Huh."

I waited for a second to see if there was anything else, but all that greeted me was silence.

"Is that... it?" I asked, nerves fraying.

"I mean, I was wondering why your coworker is a messianic figure from troll legend," he noted.

God _dammit_, I knew that name came from somewhere. "You knew?" I groaned. The dumbest thing is that that isn't even that far off. My mind makes the most stupid subconscious leaps sometimes.

"You're pretty shit at lying," he said with a shrug.

"You're not bothered?" I resisted the urge to wring my hands. "I lied to you!"

He raised an eyebrow. "Do you want me to be?"

Well, not really, but I I thought there might be at least some reaction. This passive acceptance in front of me was strangely disconcerting, _wrong_ somehow, like I didn't earn this forgiveness or something. Or maybe it was the idea that if Dave got angry, it meant he cared enough to feel betrayed by the deception, like some kind of weird reverse-trust exercise, and now I'm making things up again. The way he plain didn't give a fuck either way... it wasn't sitting right with me.

"Hey, I'm just relieved you're not a serial killer or a Russian spy," he retorted.

"Maybe I am," I huffed. "Seriously, you don't care at all?"

"Eh," he shrugged. "I guess I don't really get the concept of a 'job', or why it's such a big deal? Like, I'm aware of the concept from my ambient social osmosis powers, and that you need one to not get thrown out and starve to death, but how you all act like it's the start and end of your personal character sheet, it's bizarrely foreign to me. From what I'm hearing, most of what you told me is still true, right? Mildly embellished."

I nodded slowly.

"So it's just now... more watery flavored. Dude, if anything, this is actually cool. We have more stuff to talk about! As long as you don't bag me up and cut me apart for science, because yeah, I have a strict no-vivisection policy. Maybe my secretary can book you in for a minimally-invasive inspection next month?"

"You're not taking this seriously," I grumbled. Fuck, what was I even moaning about? I should have been happy, but my double-edged sense of justice had to make this a federal fucking issue. Was it too much to ask that my boyfriend blow up at me, then we'd ignore each other for a few days after a horrible argument, and then I'd realize the error of my ways and we could reluctantly reconcile under the pouring rain-

_Oh god Karkat's infected me my brain is ruined._ Real life doesn't work like that!

Maybe the problem wasn't so much with Dave as much as with myself, and pop culture's weird quasi-romanticization of themes of wrongdoing and forgiveness, which is stupid because it's not romantic at all to hurt your loved ones no matter how cathartic the emotional payoff is in the end. Was my issue that this wasn't dramatic enough to satisfy my masochistic ego? That it was subverting my expectations for the genre I was subconsciously framing our bizarre cross-species courtship as, which confused my dumb brain?

Ugh. Okay, so all of this does kind of sound like a fairy tale story, but I'm reasonably sure that's all bullshit pattern-matching humans are so good at. I'm not a fictional character! Real people don't have character arcs!

Days-ago me was of course unaware of all this armchair psychoanalysis being liberally thrown around like an undergrad with their first year of evolutionary psychology, and kept pawing at the issue like the complete dumbass I am.

"Doesn't your magical worldly knowledge tell you to be more wary of weird strangers?" I said.

Not that we could be said to be strangers at this point. Or even ever strangers before, given that we were secretly long-lost childhood friends all along like the crappiest twist of the year. Still, it was the principle of the thing.

"Probably," he admitted, but there wasn't the slightest hint of shame in his voice. "But meh. I trust you."

I swallowed.

There were too many things I wanted to say to that. He threw it out so casually, but hearing that simple declaration... I don't have Dave's knack for colorful metaphor, but if I had to say, I'd say it felt like the warmest and fuzziest of feelings had dislocated in my ribcage and lodged right up against my heart, digging in each pulse.

"Like, the fact that Skaia's letting us talk at all without you crossing your eyes and zoning out every second like the dumber half of a decapitated chicken, that's basically the ultimate green light from the serendipity police up in prophetic cloud heaven, right? That shit has to go through a dozen focus groups and the clowns in HR all the way up the bureaucratic machine to the goddamn mayor of magic town to get stamped and approved, you know, so buckle up-"

"Dave," I interrupted, stifling a chuckle. I lurched forward without warning and wrapped my arms around him, hugging his wet body close. He froze up in my constrictor embrace, tail lashing nervously at my legs as he halfheartedly wiggled. "You don't have to make excuses," I said.

He muttered something unflattering at me under his breath.

"You're such a dork," I told him.

I could feel his chest stifle a snort under me. 

"Fuck, you caught me."

* * *

"Karkat! I _thought_ I could smell the thick, noxious exhaust tube of a salty fanboy throttling away over here!" It's a familiar shrill shout that echoes across the room, heralding the descent of your one and only resident legislacerator.

"Razoreye," the addressee grumbles. "We're in public."

"Oh, psh." Terezi rolls her eyes as she bodily displaces you down the bench and folds herself into where you were sitting a moment ago. "The poor schmucks hanging around this sad burger joint couldn't give less of a crap, nubs. Plus, you don't seem to mind when John does it!"

"What." Karkat said flatly, shooting the legislacerator a sharp glare. "Egbert wouldn't call the sage Lord of the Wozzinjay Fiefdom by their dominant name if he were standing right in front of them, that's not-"

"I'm just saying!" she sings, sharklike teeth flashing from under her grin. "The sticks up your ass extend and retract a terrible lot whenever it's convenient. Whatcha looking at, blue boy? Gimme that."

I've been away for too long that I barely give the request a second thought, hand on the move before my brain has the time to catch up. Karkat's exasperated "Wait, no!" reaches me a second after Terezi's already grabbed his device out of my hand. His long-suffering groan drifts over the table as the troll's inhuman tongue darts out and slobbers up the screen lengthwise with a wet, disgusting slurp.

"Goddammit," he hisses, fishing in his pockets for a tissue. "Pyrope, give that back. Stop... Oh Jegus, I hate you. Fuck." He manages to snatch his phone back by the dry edge of the case, but now he's left trying to wipe the drool off with one hand as teal-tinged saliva drips over the table.

"Sburb 2?" Terezi looks perplexed. "Haven't seen those words in a long time. John, I didn't know you were into games! You've been holding out on us!"

"Yeah," I mumble, transfixed by Karkat's twitching eyebrow as he scrubs at his phone. "Um. Not a lot of people know. I did play Sburb when it first came out. It was a long time ago and I never finished."

"Oh gog, a freeplayer," she jeered.

"No!" She's joking, but I can't help but feel mildly offended by the label. "I stopped because of... complications."

"Really?" she crosses her arms, leaning back. "Go on, then, let's see your chops. Classpect us."

Jeez, that's a game I haven't played in a while. Well, why not? Flicking my eyes between an expectant Terezi and a disgruntled but reluctantly piqued Karkat, I decide that I'll go with the male troll first.

"Knight," I decide, pointing a finger. That part's a no-brainer. "Rage? Wait, no, Knight of Blood."

Terezi snorts. "You're just saying that because it's in his name."

I draw myself up. "Well, am I wrong?" I butt back. I'm ninety percent sure. Okay, eighty. Karkat's anger is too undirected for Rage, but he _cares_ enough for Blood.

"No," Karkat says, an inordinately pleased smirk on his face. "See? John knows me."

"Fiiine," the other troll grumbles. "Do me."

Oh, that one's easy.

"Prince of Mind," I declare.

Karkat guffaws and slaps the table.

"_Ugh_," she groans. "Why does everyone say that?"

The other troll's laughter only grows louder as he bends over in his chair.

"No?" I ask, confused.

"Come on! It's obvious!" She jabs two fingers at her red pointed glasses.

It takes me a second to get it.

"You're a Seer?" I say incredulously. "I can see it, I guess... but are you sure you're not a Prince? Have you tried playing it?"

"No, and I will not," she scoffs crossly. "Princes are melodramatic pansies that couldn't sniff their way out of a lidded bathtub. And their late-game passives always fuck things up. Have you seen the nullity stats?"

"Yeah, ok." I still think she's a Prince, but whatever. Changing the subject, I ask, "Did you and Karkat team, then?"

I know they go way back, but do they go way back enough to have known each other when Sburb came out? Or maybe they met playing, which isn't a terribly uncommon story.

"Duh!" Terezi rolls her eyes. "Twelve-player campaign. You're criminally overestimating the capacity of 13-year-old Karkat's social polyhedron if you think he could have pulled together that many players without coming snivelling to me for help."

"That's what I said!" I exclaim.

"Sure, keep ganging up on me," Karkat mutters. "Lambasted on all sides by vicious and unjust insinuations of incompetence, what the hell is new? Nothing to see here, back to your daily program of Karkat bashing. Truly it's a wheel that never stops turning. Some day the rivers of despicable crimson sluicing from my crippled ego will run dry, and these blood-soaked fields of arable comedy will sallow and wither. So take whatever comfort you can now in the perverse glee you squeeze drop by drop from your sadistic damage bladders. It's not going to last."

"Don't be so melodramatic," I laugh, rolling my eyes.

"I don't know why you're complaining. You fucking get off on this crap. It's disgusting."

"You know it!" I say cheerfully. "So who did you play with? Anyone I know? I don't... remember seeing you on the charts. Didn't you say you won?" I frown. I would have been following the leaderboards when we were thirteen, and those days a twelve-player victory was news.

"Did he say that?" Terezi asks, her sharklike grin widening.

"We beat the royals and hatched our frog," Karkat says, glowering. "That's basically winning."

"Technically-"

"_Technically,_" Karkat cuts in, "Ampora had his ass shadowbanned by Yaldabaoth for aimbotting and got our session nulled literally right as when the victory cutscene was playing, that pan-dripping moron."

Huh. On one hand, they played with _Eridan_? That must have been a boatload of fun. On the other, Eridan "STICK SO FAR UP HIS WASTE CHUTE IT'S A WONDER HE CAN BREATHE WITHOUT CHOKING" Ampora was _hacking_?

"Oh, you have no idea what henious dipshittery Ampora got himself into when we were kids," Karkat grumbles, reading the skepticism off your face. "The ban caught Kanaya and Feferi in the blast radius too, though Kanaya managed to win her appeal."

I didn't take Kanaya of all people to be a gamer, but I file the tidbit of knowledge away. Also, "Feferi Peixes?" I mouth under my breath. Karkat knows the _heiress_? I mean, I know he is a pretty big deal in some circles, but _damn_.

"You're not getting to the point, Karkat!" Terezi sings.

"It's pretty goddamn ironic, because Eridan probably did the royal diddliest-squat out of the pathetic lot of us _ow_."

Karkat jolts in his chair from a kick under the table. Terezi leverages the distraction to gleefully interject. "You're forgetting the part after that! You know, where you browbeated Sollux into hacking spectator mode and got the whole party banned from Paradox Space trying to troll randoms over the Furthest Ring, that part?"

A strange sense of déjà vu creeps over me.

Before, I would have let it slip—the odds are crazily improbable, so it's probably nothing—but after meeting a fish man on vacation who turned out to be my lost longtime friend, my standards for probability have been greatly eroded. I have to ask.

"Troll?" I prod.

"Yes, that's what I am. Thank you, John." Karkat mutters. The embarrassment behind his snide deflection doesn't take an expert to detect, and if this is going where you think it is, you definitely don't blame him. It won't stop you from laughing your ass off, of course, but at least now you know why he hasn't ever brought up his juvenile gaming misadventures before.

"Yes! In fact, he-"

"_Pyrope._"

"-even got a hatecrush on a _human kid_!"

"_Contracterrorist Dragoner Razoreye_."

"The most hilarious part is he didn't even realize the kid was, I quote, 'not homosexual', and-"

Holy shit. No way.

"We agreed we weren't telling anyone about that!"

Look, either the universe is conspiring to troll me, or Sburb was programmed with mysterious prognosticative powers, because there's no way this is really happening.

"Oh, you mean like you agreed to get the HAZOPs for the Westfield projects back to me by Monday?"

"Are you motherfucking serious? Is this about that? Get on Horseporn Sweatleer's case, not mine! What do you want me to do? I'm not even qualified to-"

"Karkat," I interrupt them. "What was your handle?"

"Huh?" He turns to me. "Player handle? Why?"

"Was it carcinoGeneticist?"

He cocks his head. "How do you know that?"

This time it's my turn to produce a strangle of inarticulate rage while I bury my face in my hands.

How is it even possible that this _never came up_ in all the years I've known this pile of trolls? If I wasn't convinced before that my life has devolved into comedy-logic metacausal inanity, I am now, because complete bullshit like this doesn't happen in real life.

"What the fuck is it now?" Karkat grumbles, poking my forehead.

I lift my head and drag my fingers down my face, as if I could somehow tear down this defacement of probabilistic law with my bare hands if I thought it hard enough. The next words to come from my mouth are practically cosmically preordained, so memetically ingrained in my characteristic vernacular that it had become a deterministic certainty from the moment this dumb revelation became a thing.

"_THIS IS STUPID._"

* * *

"Check this out," I announced.

Dave stared at the object in my hand, blinking once uncomprehendingly.

"Nice... stick?" he tried. "Novelty dildo? You might be overestimating yourself a bit there, chump."

I snorted, thudding the end of the meter-long rod of matt black into the ground. "It's a transpiration-driven electrokinetic generator, numbskull."

"Of course," Dave agreed. "I understand everything now. That was a sentence I understood without any form of struggle or reservation."

Okay, I deserved that. "You stick one end in the water. Transpiration draws flow through the capillaries and it makes power from ion accumulation." I looked around. "We're going to have to find somewhere to mount it."

"Wow," he remarked. "Sounds fake as shit."

I rolled my eyes. "It's real as shit and also a LOLAR prototype I'm basically stealing, so don't lose it."

"Aren't you on holiday?" Dave asked. "Do you usually bring cutting-edge experimental tech on your beach trips? "

"Yeah," I said, setting the pole against a crevice in the rock bed. "Why wouldn't I?"

He gave me a flat, incredulous stare.

"I'm kidding," I laughed. "I forgot to take it out of my bag after I got it back from the London team. It's a PR demo piece, so they're not going to miss it for a week or two. I'll come back and switch it out for a more boring power source next weekend. Unless the magic amnesia kicks in and I forget I left it here, in which case I'm totally boned and Vriska is going to rip me to itty little pieces."

"Man, you'd better not forget, then." Dave said, slapping a hand to his chest in a mock gasp.

"You'll get the chance to remind me yourself."

I pulled a ziplock bag from my pack and lobbed it to Dave, who caught it out of the air. Inside was a hazel-lime streaked phone with an almost utilitarian build, all thick edges and no seams. The merman opened the bag up and fished out the device, inspecting the screen as it boots up. "Sweet," he muttered, running a finger over the bevelled bioplastic casing.

"Water resistant, but not waterproof," I warned. "Sorry about the aesthetics. It was the only model the shop had left, but the specs pretty good. I think."

He fell silent. For a few seconds, I thought that he might be configuring the phone, but then I looked up from my generator fiddling, and the device was to a side, the merman staring at me. He averted his eyes as I met his gaze.

"Okay, John, this may possibly go on record as the dumbest thing to ever exit my genius mouth, but..."

Dave licked his lips. "Ugh. I can't possibly pay you back for this, you know. Like, I lack both economic and physical mobility to acquire human currency, nor any goods or services to offer in financial transaction—I guess I could put on a very selective circus act, or sell my body to more weird creepers roaming the beaches—"

"_Hey!_"

"-but this money you're spending is cold cash flushed straight down the drain. Kaput, gone forever, through the stank-ass sewer pipes and right out to sea, doomed forevermore to drift the fickle currents of the vast capitalist ocean of the global economy."

"Uh, yeah. Obviously?" I wasn't sure if it was a question or what. "Wow, that _is_ the stupidest thing you've ever said. By far."

"No, dude. I'm just saying, all these riches you're showering on my nubile body with reckless abandon make a guy feel a little self-conscious. What if I, I dunno, drop this in the sea or something? Hell, I spend 90% of my time under the waterline. Or I did, at least, before you showed up. There's practically no chance an unfortunate water-related incident isn't going to happen at some point. God, my palms are getting sweaty at the thought of it. I can't be entrusted with this much responsibility, John. It's unthinkable. Cannot compute. Beep boop."

"You can't be a robot, you're a fantasy creature," I said without thinking. "No, what? I mean, you're probably right? But don't worry about it. It's just a phone! I'm not a starving grad student anymore, I can afford it."

"Yeah, but... bleh." Dave set the device down on the shore. "It doesn't sit right with me. I already owe you too much. Are you sure there's nothing I can do for you?"

I stifled a laugh. "I honestly can't tell if that's a shitty come-on. Or an ironic come-on, which is basically the same thing."

He wiggled his eyebrows, lifting himself up and leaning closer. "Oh? I have a lot of _skills_, you know," he drawls with a terrible attempt at a sultry voice. "Do you want a... _personal demonstration_? Wink."

Jesus flipping Christ, he actually said "wink" with a straight face. I bopped him gently on the nose, pushing him an inch back. "Be careful, I might take you up on that offer."

"Oooh, Doctor Egbert. Take me back to your lab and show me what horrible, terrible experiments you're going to do to me."

"Oh my god, Dave," I stuck my tongue out between my teeth. "That's... actually really weird? My work is not sexy, ew. You do realize that most of the things on my lab benches are organic chemicals and bloated fish corpses, right?"

"Eh," he said with a shrug, plopping back into the water. "You know what you _could_ do? Take some samples."

The wrong thoughts immediately drifted to mind.

"Blood samples," he hastily corrected.

Oh, right. Of course. Look, I blame Dave's perversive influence! I managed to get away from him for a decade and recover something resembling a normal human psyche, and now here I am again, sucked back into his weird gravity well of puppetry fetishes and ridiculous memes.

"And, fuck if I know, mouth swabs? Hair samples? Do your sciencey best."

"Is that legal?" I asked dubiously. I didn't expect him to make this offer. To be honest, I still don't know what to expect from him half the time. Dave's mind is full of things that would make any sane person shriek in combined confusion and horror. "As in, magic-legal? Is that a thing?"

"Why not?" Dave answered, unbothered. "Nothing's stopping you from putting my impossible awesomeness under a microscope and sciencing the shit out of it. Whether you'll get anything useful out of it is a whole other question, but then that's your problem."

"Huh. Hmm." I pondered the issue.

Well, if he was offering... I inspected his face. Maybe I'd have refused if it looked like he was making himself do something out of a sense of obligation, but I'd say I've become pretty good at reading Dave, and it felt like he really, genuinely didn't care that much one way or another.

And really, why should he? Maybe I was importing fictional fantasy values and projecting them onto him, because millions of people get their blood drawn and various body parts swabbed every day, and there's no reason being half fish would make that any different, not without the sort of traumatic backstory you get in movies.

"Why not?" I decided.

* * *

So that was that. Later that day, fifteen hours before I had to leave for home, I dragged my field kit out of the bottom of my travel suitcase and took 6 cubic centimeters of blood, plus a snip of hair and a nail clipping, even though I have no idea what I would do with those. There were no suspicious reactions, glowing magic bullshit or angels descending from the sky to tell me to fuck off.

I took the samples with me when I left, and now, pressing my keycard to the the scanner and hearing it buzz quietly in accedence, it's that 6cc of precious liquid that I'm clutching in my coat pocket as I slink into the labs at the dead of night.

I know what you're thinking: if I was perfectly happy abusing company resources for zoologically dubious purposes for with other people around during the day, why am I sneaking in at night now? The answer is disappointingly mundane.

You see, when I'm mixing stuff and heating beakers and running the machines with tubes of mystery fluid, nobody has any clue what I'm doing, and they couldn't care less. If someone asks, I can just bullshit some random excuse and they'll be none the wiser. But that's chemistry, and microscopy is a whole different ball game. Light microscopes are already a risk to step away from because any nosy dick could peek down the eyepiece and get an eyeful of whatever impossible crap I'm looking at, but electron microscopes?

The computer interface projects your image over your whole screen, and the monitor is room-facing! If it turns out it's just the same old blood cells lying around in my sample, that's fine, even if it might draw a few weird looks, but if it turns out Dave's blood is chock-full of tiny microscopic fairies, the last thing I want is to have Mituna peering over my back as I unravel the mysteries of the supernatural universe. What a disaster that would be.

Now that I've signed myself in, the system has me logged, but that's fine—I do this all the time, coming in late when I get hit with a great idea at the wrong time, or just to catch up on work when I can't sleep. Nobody bothers to check the logs anyway.

Doors swing silently closed behind me as I trudge through the dark hallways, navigating on memory and the city light trickling in through the windows. It's oddly calming, how peaceful it is at LOLAR at night. When I reach the Wolfson lab, I press my card to the scanner again, and at its buzz, gently push the door open.

It's pitch-black. I step in, my shoes clacking against the floor tiles, and grope at the wall to my side, looking for the light switch.

Before I find it, a tiny _tink_ of glass hitting ceramic emanates from the far corner.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which I continue to be confused what genre I'm writing.

I freeze. I have to hold myself back from booking it that very instant.

Act normal. I haven't done anything wrong. I'm perfectly authorized to be here, I've done it a hundred times before. If I just pretend that nothing is wrong and keep moving, there's no reason for whoever it is to tackle me to the ground and strip-search me for mystery fluids. Everything is fine.

My thumb finds the switch and I flick it down.

The lights flicker to life.

There's nobody here.

I slowly let out my held breath.

Was it my imagination? No, there's no doubt about there being a sound. Did whatever it was fall by itself?

I shuffle over to where I heard the clattering come from and drift my eyes to the floor.

"Huh," I muse.

It's salt plates loaded with a liquid film, not glassware as I thought. The spectrometer on the bench which I'm guessing it was meant for is freshly wiped down, the crumpled tissue to a side still damp with ethanol. Someone _was_ here.

But where are they now? Those three seconds can't have been enough for them to get away. The window's shut, and the two exits are on the other side of a lab. Whoever this was would have to be Usain Bolt to move that fast. Are they hiding somewhere? Why would they hide? At least I know it's not a robber, unless it's a criminal with an astounding passion for spectroscopic analysis.

"Karkat?" I call softly. My voice echoes through the room once, twice, thrice. "Hello? Mituna? Cronus?"

Heh, what am I thinking? There's absolutely no way Cronus would be caught dead hanging around here after five.

Slowly, I ask, "...Kanaya?"

She's supposed to be back tomorrow, but maybe she got back early and had this idea stuck in her head she couldn't wait to try out? It's as good a theory as any other. The initial question still stands, though: why all of this cloak and dagger business? I stumble on a kick step and jump, cursing quietly when I look down and realize what it is.

There's no response.

A chill runs down my back.

Well, I don't think there's anyone here—not anymore, at least. Just to be certain, I squat down and check under the tables, feeling incredibly stupid as I do so. Nope. Empty. A quick pad around the room returns more of the same. The place is deserted.

It chafes at my professional skepticism to think it, but as I've said, my willingness to consider the unbelievable been expanded after recent encounters—did this mysterious person _teleport_ away? Or use some form of supernatural power, to... I don't know, phase through the wall?

I'm back at the IR machine before I know it, and with a jolt I realize that I'm still clutching the sample I picked off the floor. Raising it to eye level, I peer into the thin trapped film and watch the liquid glisten.

A clue, maybe?

My eyes turn to the spectrometer.

Hmm.

I polish the faces off with a bit of solvent and slot it into the sample holder, tightening the clamps as I go. Lid goes up, sample goes in. Whoever it was already had the program loaded up on the computer hooked up to the equipment; all it takes is a tap of the space bar to wake the screen. I select start, skip through the configs, and press run.

Seconds drag past. The machine remains deathly silent as the spectrum readout traces itself over the screen, inch after inch.

The process finishes without much fanfare. The peak selection interface pops up, but I ignore it.

I'm too busy staring.

"What?" I mutter.

The curve is an almost smooth curve, cresting at just above 3000, but that's it. No sharp peaks, no fingerprint pattern, practically just a sine function. I'm not sure this is even physically possible.

This _is_ a high-resolution scan, right? I check the resolution settings. Yep. I run it again, twiddling my thumbs nervously as I wait, but the output is the same bizarre curve. Because I'm a good experimentalist, I even try running some pure ethanol on the machine to check that it's not broken, and no, that gives the result I'd expect.

Huh.

The supernatural powers hypothesis is rapidly climbing in my list, but I'm still hesitant to commit to it quite yet. It would be silly to immediately jump to the most extraordinary explanation wherever I find an unexpected result. That's not how the scientific method works. There might be a perfectly physical explanation for this result.

...Though, I do have one possible way of checking the paranormal theory.

Hesitating, I take one last look around to see if the person has come back, but the room is dead silent, not so much as a twitch of wind. I'm alone.

If the mystery person has bolted, then they're clearly more scared of me than I am of them. In that case, I might as well go ahead and do what I came here to do in the first place, right? All that's different is a slight reordering of my priorities.

I move myself towards the hemofractionator. It's a wide and squat thing, one of our few machines that we keep housed inside the blast hood. The troll device isn't really designed to separate human blood, but it does the job anyway to a higher fidelity than the cheap homohaem-targeted ones. A poke at the touchscreen informs me that the chromocyte filters haven't been emptied.

_The chromocyte filters haven't been emptied._

I pause in my tracks, finger hovering over the eject latch.

It can't be this easy, can it?

I depress the switch. The filter tray pops out.

The cake on the membranes is a deep, dark jade green.

* * *

\-- ectoBiologist [EB] began pestering turntechGodhead [TG] at 03:17 --  
  
EB: can trolls be magic?  
TG: what  
TG: i mean arent half of them pretty much magic already  
EB: no, i don't mean psychic!  
EB: magic, like you.  
TG: uh  
TG: i guess why not  
TG: is there really a fundamental categorical difference between psychic and magic  
EB: psychic abilities are scientific and well documented! we study the different expressions and mechanistic pathways in their activation!  
EB: magic is a bunch of wishy washy concept nonsense.  
EB: there's a huge difference!  
TG: ok  
TG: youre the expert  
TG: why are you asking though  
EB: i think my troll friend is magic.  
EB: or might be.  
TG: what  
TG: which one  
TG: dont tell me its the wizard guy god ive heard two sentences about the wizard guy and i already hate him  
EB: no, kanaya.  
EB: her gamma plasma fraction makes no sense. every kind of spectrum is giving me a useless curve and electrophoresis is saying it doesn't even have any proteins.  
TG: is that normal  
EB: no, it's totally impossible!  
EB: and i'm getting the exact same thing with your blood!  
EB: there are blood cells and proteins in the alpha fraction, but the others...  
EB: it's just some weird, ideal, platonic liquid or something  
TG: so what youre saying is  
TG: shes a vampire  
EB: no!!  
EB: maybe a witch? that has magic blood?  
TG: a magical witch  
EB: you know what i'm saying.  
TG: yeah but i have no idea what to tell to you  
TG: i know jack shit about magical troll witches  
TG: if you pour water on her will she melt  
TG: gargle in agony and dissolve to the floor into a puddle of troll juice in excruciating slow motion  
TG: like shes a wannabe actress auditioning for a homebrew village production of the wizard of oz and this is her one chance to impress the directors and make it big  
TG: all of her hopes and dreams pinned on making this one overwrought death scene as viscerally evocative as theatrically possible through the fine art of shrieking pantomime  
EB: i think i've seen her wash her hands...  
TG: oh shit  
TG: what do we do now theyve solved their one and only weakness  
EB: ok, joke time is over. do you think i'm right?  
TG: about her being a witch  
EB: not that specifically, i suppose. more in general that theres something spooky going on?  
EB: i dont know what to do.  
EB: do magic people have a secret handshake to signal each other they're all cool?  
TG: well heres a brilliant idea  
TG: why dont you  
TG: ask her  


* * *

"Let's get this over with!" Vriska barks, calling the meeting to order. "Welcome back, Questant Dunestar. Anything to share that can't wait for the report?"

My eyes travel to the jadeblood seated on the opposite side of the long table, shuffling her notes.

I've been watching her all morning. Kanaya walked in at the strike of eight with the same composed ease as ever, unpacking her gear and unloading boxes of field samples into the fridges as if she had never been away. A warm greeting, the typical exchange of pleasantries, an irritated side eye shot towards Karkat at the chaotic state of the lab after her absence. Nothing overtly suspicious. I saw her saunter over to the spectroscopy lab and launch straight into her routine, not a moment of pause as she loaded the machines and went through the motions of fractionating and scanning new samples.

Nothing overtly suspicious. She didn't look bothered that the filters had been cleaned out, which is a point in her favor, but only a very small one—I know for a fact that she's an incredible actor when she needs to be. Now, watching her file her papers, it's almost to make me reconsider my assumptions. Almost.

Yes, jade blood isn't definitive proof that it was hers. It could belong to anyone, or a lusus, even some exotic deep-sea fauna. But why would anyone invest in all that secrecy just to test an ordinary sample? And if it wasn't her, why wouldn't they do it before I came back, when they would be much less likely to be caught?

It's not hard evidence, but it does pin her as the prime suspect until further information comes to light.

"Yes."

Kanaya's verbally capitalized utterance knocks me back into the present moment. She stood up and started addressing the room when I was daydreaming. It's impossible to read anything off her face as her dark green eyes slide past me.

"I spoke to Meenah," she says. At the sound of the sea dweller's name, the rest of the room perks up. "She informed me of another potential Gaian animus, allegedly corroborated by seven independent sources. Alpha Beforus doesn't have the manpower to pursue this one, but word is traveling quick. It would be in our interests to get a team there as expediently as possible."

"Fuuuuuuuuck. Another one?" Vriska groans.

"Why do we even bother with these?" Cronus mutters. "It's going to be another mutated sparkle eel again. I swear the miserable hillbillies infesting this country couldn't tell a dolphin from a fucking glazed banana."

"We've dispatched people on far less," Kanaya reminds us. "And-"

"Yes, we've all had enough meta-analyses on xenofauna research rammed down our protein chutes to last our fibrous digestive secretors until the heat death of the universe, Maryam," Karkat growls. "Why don't we cut the shit and find out which tormented souls the company is booting down the infinite stairs of mortal suffering with nary a helmet nor checked baggage allowance this time?"

"Where is this?" I ask.

It would be really bad timing to have myself sent off on another wild goose chase now of all times. It's going to be trouble if I don't find a better solution for Dave situation soon, and being crammed into a Virgin economy seat with a mewling cat on one side and a screaming baby on the other isn't my idea of a productive work week.

"It's a small town. You would not have heard of it."

"It always is, isn't it?" Vriska snaps crabbily. She's probably the least happy about these dumb excursions of the lot of you, because the people over at New York always kick up a fuss about claiming expenses for what sounds like total bullshit to any sane person. Nevertheless, statistics and policy force our hand. "Out with it."

"Scarborough."

Oh _shit_.

Don't panic yet, I tell myself. There's more than one Scarborough. It's a weird coincidence. That's all.

"Rhode Island?" Mituna barks.

"Maine," Kanaya corrects.

_Fuck_.

"Do you know something about this, John?" Vriska addresses me. I grimace: my internal swearing has to be showing on my face.

"No," I state with a straight face.

She pinches the bridge of her nose and exudes a pained sigh. I wince. I don't think that was very convincing.

"No. I'm not dealing with this headache, I don't want to know. John, you're going." What? Isn't that the opposite of what she should do if she thinks there's something up with me? "And take Karkat with you; he's free. Maybe then we'll finally get some godforsaken peace and quiet around here!"

"What?" Karkat objects. "I have-"

"I request to be assigned on this trip," Kanaya states. "I'm the only one already briefed on the details of the situation, so it would be inefficient resource allocation not to."

"Great!" Vriska talks over the male troll's impassioned protests. "Three is more than enough. You have until the end of this month to bring me disappointment."

She's already flipping her husktop open and reordering blocks in her aggregation calendar.

"Terezi will pick up on the Westfield projects. You two, HDACs is pushed back to next perigee. John can Skype Mindfang on the drone acquisitions. Cancel the quarterly reviews on the placements, just send them the report—they know exactly how they did."

"Do I not get a choice in this?" Karkat growls. "Egbert! Say something!"

"We can leave on Thursday," Kanaya says, tapping on her phone. "Shall I book the tickets?"

"Isn't that a little soon?" I attempt to interject.

She cocks an eyebrow. "The target is intrinsically time-sensitive. Do you have non-negotiable obligations to attend to in the coming weeks?"

"No, but..." My voice trails off as I scramble for an excuse and come up empty-handed. She stares at me, quietly skeptical.

"...and Ampora can tie that up. Done!" Vriska exclaims. "Everything sorted. I'll send out an email later on all the changes."

Fuck it. I sigh as I sink into my chair. There's no deterring the cerulean once she's made up her mind, and to her credit, she does always make it work somehow. There is no consistent organization, no permanence to planning, the perpetually fluxional state of the office only ever instantaneously rendered within the spider's convoluted mental web. All we do is hold on in the wake of her unstoppable personality, and sometimes that means having my week turned upside down on my manager's whim.

And that's fine, but it does make me irritated when someone leverages Vriska's Vriskaness to get results, knocking over everyone else's pieces in the splash radius—and Kanaya's surreptitious look at me and Karkat's defeated faces makes me think that she knows exactly what she's doing. With a casual shrug, she seats herself once more.

"Next thing on the agenda... _why_ are we still answering English's emails again? Captor!"

Investigating the Questant's magical witchhood can wait. I need to talk to Dave.

* * *

\-- ectoBiologist [EB] began pestering turntechGodhead [TG] at 19:47 --  
  
EB: are you there?  
TG: sup  
TG: back already  
TG: not to brag but im a very busy man so make it snappy  
TG: all of this absolutely critical fuckall nothing on my plate over here in budget seaworld  
EB: we might have a problem.  
EB: kanaya got a report of gaian anima in your town.  
TG: what  
EB: psychic gaian life.  
EB: becquerel? the maple valley cat?  
TG: oh  
TG: so what  
EB: me, kanaya and karkat are being sent over to check it out.  
TG: karkat?  
EB: the one i called kankri because i was being stupid.  
TG: oh  
TG: remind me?  
EB: um...  
EB: karkat vantas? cranky mid blood guy, cytogenetics?  
TG: ah  
EB: not the issue here! lolar is investigating your home!  
TG: is that supposed to be a bad thing  
TG: you were planning to come up here anyway right  
TG: now youre doing it on company time  
TG: sounds like a win to me  
EB: but what if we find you? i think you might be the thing they reported!  
EB: i know there's that invisibility protection thing, but i feel that it's dangerous.  
TG: relax  
TG: there are rumors of weird shit all the time and you never see magic people confirmed in the news  
TG: the old laws have worked for centuries theyre not going to randomly crap over now  
TG: maybe its like a legit telekinetic whale or some dumb crap like that  
TG: its been what eight years since wonder kitten were way overdue  
EB: is skaia powerful enough to stop them if theyre actively looking for you?  
EB: or something of your description, i guess, since they wouldn't be able to remember you specifically.  
EB: even if the secret won't get out, you could still get hurt! what if you're caught in a net and no one realizes because they can't see you?  
TG: ive survived this long  
TG: and youll be here right  
TG: my own knight in shining armor  
TG: swoon  
EB: ok...  
EB: but i'm still worried.  
TG: i can try and meet them  
TG: then well know if im liable to be unknowingly strangled by their bigfoot hunting fishing lines like the saddest invisible sea turtle of all time  
EB: i guess if you're ok with it... they are all really cool people and i trust them.  
TG: problem solved there we go  
TG: the power of friendship saves the day once again  
EB: but we are going to have to come up with a plan in case it doesn't work.  
EB: i don't think saying it's a prank is going to go very well.  
EB: what then?  
TG: its a starting point  
TG: what could go wrong  
TG: the only thing we stand to lose is any semblance of sanity you hold in your peers eyes  
TG: theres time  
EB: well at least i'll see you again :)  
TG: jegus its been like three days clingy much  
EB: you're not fooling me, dave.  
EB: i'm just saying, you're a lot smoother over text than in person!  
TG: what does that mean  
TG: i will magnanimously take that as a compliment  
TG: just get a battery charger and come over dude  
EB: we're heading out thursday.  
TG: ok  
TG: wait  
TG: oh what in fresh hell is this  
TG: hey look gotta go somethings come up what a goddamn surprise  
TG: see you whenever i guess  
EB: ok.  
\-- turntechGodhead [TG] is now an idle chum! --  
EB: um  
EB: good luck?  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LOLAR violates so many employment and health and safety regulations, but at least in this AU nobody is being fed to giant spiders.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There we go, finally a projected final chapter count. By the way, I've started another work, [You Guard the Pyres of a Stillborn Cosmos](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21780091/chapters/51969067), which updates every Friday independently from this (which has no consistent update schedule at all). It's the prequel to [You Are a Refugee From an Omnicidal Empire](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19883950/chapters/47093596), and basically follows the beta kids being stuck on Earth again after dying in Game Over. It's a... well, I don't wan't say "higher-effort fic" because it's not like I don't put effort into this, but that's essentially what it is.
> 
> Back to things relevant to this story, in this chapter I make up a lot of stuff about trolls, continue to not explain why they exist in this weird slapdash AU, and also break everyone's suspension of disbelief by letting the USA have a functional public transport system.

\-- ectoBiologist [EB] began pestering turntechGodhead [TG] at 08:15 --  
  
EB: dave?  
EB: are you there?  
\-- ectoBiologist [EB] is now an idle chum! --  
EB: should i be worried?  
EB: we're heading off tomorrow.  
\-- ectoBiologist [EB] is now an idle chum! --  
EB: talk to me when you see this  
\-- ectoBiologist [EB] is now an idle chum! --  


* * *

"Psst."

Karkat stirs from his woozy half-slumber with a disgruntled grunt like a dragon roused from its hoard of sweet, blissful rest. He tosses me a glare.

"Can I ask you a question?"

I have to mumble my words over the loud rumble of wheels over bumpy asphalt. We're an hour into the Interstate and everyone's settled in for the long haul, but I choose my strikes surgically, and when there's a window of opportunity, I _take_ it.

What I'm trying to say is that Kanaya's sitting right across the aisle, and she just got up and went to the washroom.

"What?" Karkat snaps.

"Do you think Kanaya's... I dunno, acting any differently? Since she came back?" I whisper.

His sleepy gaze sharpens into something resembling focus, and the troll props himself up in his seat. "Do _you_ think so?" he throws back at me.

"I don't know! I don't know her that well. That's why I'm asking you, 'cause you're such great friends with everyone!"

He rolls his eyes at my jab.

It's true—Kanaya's away so much, and even if I _heard_ about the jadeblood a lot in our school days, I only properly met her after I started working here, so I'm not that finely attuned to her behavioral ins and outs. Which is why this morning I came up with a perfect idea: if Kanaya is a secret witch, why not ask Karkat what he knows?

Of course, I can't say it outright. He might not even know! But if Kanaya's running blood tests on herself, it makes sense that it has to be a recent development, so if he can tell me anything about anything that's changed since she's come back, that's a clue.

"You're a nosy little bastard, you know?" he snorts.

"Says the guy that crashed my Sburb session to backseat game and yell xenophobic slurs at complete strangers," I shoot back.

"Will you just let that go already?" Karkat groans. "Is this what I'm going to hear for the rest of my life? Is the palpable embarrassment for the many sins of my foolish youth not punishment enough for this poor soul? I'll be a retired elderly troll, laboriously weeding the starved producesoils Harley bullied me into seeding, humming century-old chiptunes befitting of my aged and brittle bones, and there you'll be, popping out of the dumpster you live in and lambasting me about that time seventy years ago I tried to talk to you in a video game. You have a full-time job, John, maybe try and do that instead of torturing poor Karkat in his meager hours of rest."

"Okay," I agree wholeheartedly. "So about Kanaya...?"

"Why do you want to know?" he growls.

"Dude, answer the question and you can go back to sleep."

"You say that as if I'd be able to go back to sleep after you've got me all riled up with your ragemongering," Karkat butts back.

"Come on."

"Fine. I..."

He hesitates, looking around and only now noticing that the subject of our conversation has stepped away. "No," he says, shaking his head.

"_Karkat!_"

"Okay, okay! Look—"

He lowers his voice and leans in. I prod him in the side to get him talking.

"This is going to sound indescribably stupid," he hisses. I can feel the stutter in his breath against my face. "She's... _spookier_."

_Jackpot_, I think to myself.

"How so?" I ask casually, keeping my tone conversational.

Karkat reclines back into his seat. His expression is twisted into an uncomfortable grimace.

"Do we really have to get into this?" he grouses.

"Yes."

"Ugh. She's quieter. Not how much she speaks, but how she _moves_. And... I don't know. She's more deliberate in her motions? Faster? And her oppressive aura of chainsaw murderdanger has been waxing consistently since she's come back."

Huh. The way he's putting it, it sounds less like she's a magical witch, and more like she's... a _werewolf_, maybe?

(Except "were" is derived from the archaic term for "man", so it would be... _thallwolf_? Or would it just be "barkbeast polymorph"?)

"Wow," I muse aloud.

"You think I'm a moron, don't you?" Karkat grumbles. "Why ask if-"

"No!" I protest. "I believe you! Do you think she got bit by a radioactive arctic wolf and transformed into an arctic werewolf?"

Karkat gives me one of his signature "did you get dropped on your head as a baby" looks.

"What's the difference between an arctic werewolf and a regular werewolf?"

...Karkat didn't say that.

I slowly turn around.

Kanaya's raising an eyebrow at us.

"Hey, Kanaya!" I greet her, grinning awkwardly. Please don't have heard much of that. "Obviously an arctic werewolf turns into their wolf form when it's cold, instead of when it's a full moon, which is much more awesome. It's such a liability to have predictable transformation schedules!"

"How would the threshold temperature be defined?" Kanaya asks, lowering herself into her seat. "Lunar schedules are fairly definite, albeit containing certain room for arbitration of tolerances. It seems to me that a thermally-controlled form transition would in contrast be entirely arbitrary. Not to mention that if it's an arctic wolf's perception of cold, a resident of a warmed climate could essentially live their entire life without being alerted to their condition."

"Well, that's the appeal of it, right?" I argue. "It's the perfect set up! A young woman goes on a fun trip to the South Pole, and finds herself in the unexpected throes of her ancestral arctic lycanthropy that has been passed down as a recessive gene through the generations, only to burst forth at the most inopportune time."

"Why the _South_ Pole?" she asks, frowning. "I though she was an arctic werewolf."

"Because then not only does she have to prevent herself from viciously mauling her friends, but she has to do so while defending herself from the native _Antarctic_ werewolves, whose natural enmity comes part and parcel with her unfortunate condition."

Kanaya nods, like that was a completely sensible thing I just said. "Reasonable enough, I suppose. But before we enter a more sophisticated discussion of the lore behind your fictional universe of polar lycanthropy, can you clarify: are we speculating about the hypothetical existence of arctic werewolves, or merely developing the premise for Karkat's next barely plausible faux-scientific TV series?"

"What do you mean, faux-scientific?" Karkat yells over your shoulder. "Thermophiles of Europa is firmly entrenched in absolutely factual scientific evidence, you illiterate flat-Earther! Read the fucking literature!"

"Of course I'm not talking about real arctic werewolves," I say, ignoring the heckler. "Werewolves don't exist in real life!"

Kanaya cocks her head slightly as she fixes a stare on me.

"I see."

I swallow. Her gaze is strangely intense. She holds it for a second, two, but finally breaks away by the third, apparently satisfied with what she sees.

Her attention shifts to Karkat. "Yes, Karkat, the description of the physical and geological conditions of the moon are accurate. The depiction of massive electrical jellyfish and—ah, yes—the sparkling cities of Europan water cholerbears with fusion weaponry, I take some issue with."

She seems to consider the conversation over, because with that, the suspected arctic werewolf returns to pecking at her phone. Karkat releases an incoherent sound of annoyance.

"I'm the ecology consultant," he grumbles. "If I had any say over the fusion weaponry I would have at least given them nuclear lightsabers instead of budget laser guns."

I watch Kanaya and her manicured digits fluttering over the tiny keyboard on her screen. Karkat's right. Those fingers are moving just a hair too quickly to be normal.

There's definitely something going on.

* * *

\-- ectoBiologist [EB] began pestering turntechGodhead [TG] at 15:12 --  
  
EB: are you back yet?  
EB: we've arrived.  
EB: based on a talk with karkat i had just now i'm pretty sure kanaya is some sort of supernatural creature.  
EB: ok, i guess either you've been very busy doing whatever you have been doing, or you lost your phone somehow.  
EB: or the charger.  
EB: i brought a new charger i got off amazon, by the way.  
EB: if you don't reply i will probably come looking for you so a heads up.  
EB: stay safe.  
\-- ectoBiologist [EB] is now an idle chum! --  


* * *

"Why did you decide to troll us in the first place?" I wonder as we wait for the driver to unload our luggage.

Because of how ridiculously anal Karkat is about punctuality we arrived way too early for our departure, so now we're the last ones standing around waiting for the guy to fish our stuff out from all the way at the back of the luggage compartment. Karkat's tapping his foot impatiently, while Kanaya's simply standing there with her arms crossed, quietly judging the efficiency of the poor man.

"What?" Karkat says. "Are you talking about the Sburb thing again?"

"What else?"

"Mother of grubs, how the fuck do you expect me to remember?"

I grab my suitcase and tow it over to the bus stand. "So it was random? You just picked a random username? How many people _did_ you troll?"

"I, for one, don't recall any other victims being involved in our ill-conceived bothering plans," Kanaya says.

It takes me a moment to remember that she was in this too and deconfuse myself. Which one was she? Judging by the hemotyping, it was grim something? GA. I remember that she talked to Rose a lot. Actually, I think I even thought she was a guy for some time at the start.

"It wasn't random," Karkat grunts as he heaves a crab-legged trunk onto the pavement. "Why do you care? I don't remember. I'm old, John. I'm losing my marbles, and soon my feeble grip on reality will slip away along with my most treasured memories and the elementary capacity to wipe my own ass, _if you don't give this stupid thing a rest_."

He furiously grinds the last part out as he strains to stop his biomotorized travel container from scuttling off in the wrong direction.

"Why do you even use that thing?" Kanaya comments as she casually slings a rucksack her size over her back. "It's caused nothing but trouble and inconvenience."

Karkat kicks the shut-down on his luggage and its legs reluctantly fold up into the body. He just lifts it by the handle instead.

"Uh, to be clear, that's a joke, right?" I say. "You have a midblood lifespan, you told me that. You're not going to keel over when you hit thirty?"

He doesn't look old, but the thing with trolls is that they age inside out. You can have specimens with anemic organ degeneration and pan holes the size of your fist, and just looking at them you would have no idea! It's a fascinating field of study, but I'm not an expert on it.

"Yes, it was a joke." Karkat looks scandalized at the insinuation alone. "Hold off on the corpse party and champagne. I'm not going to croak any time soon—I'm not even middle-aged, for fuck's sake."

"You sure act like a cranky old dad," I retort.

There's a tap on my back.

"I'm having trouble understanding this map," Kanaya says behind me.

I lean over to look at the pdf she has open on her phone. "You're looking at the wrong part," I inform her. "We're at the Spurwink Road station, not the Memorial Park."

"Oh." She zooms out, locates our actual position, and looks over at me. "You have been here before, haven't you? I remember you mentioning something to that effect."

I shift uncomfortably. "Once or twice."

Kanaya starts off in where I assume is the correct direction, and I follow. Karkat tromps after us, loudly informing her, "John spends his vacation days basking in the beach and sunshine here instead of stewing at home bingeing pirated TV shows like a non-psychopath."

"I didn't know that," the female troll says, giving me a strange look with renewed interest. "Didn't Vriska made you take a week off recently? Were you here?"

"Yeah."

"Did you see anything out of the ordinary?"

For a second my heartbeat quickens, thinking that she knows something about Dave, but then I remember what we're here for.

"Psychic-wise?" I ask nonchalantly. "Not really."

"That sounds like there's something up non-psychic-wise."

"Uh." I grasp for words. It should be this hard! "No, I guess like typical ghost stories, you know. Cemeteries. Not much interesting."

"Hmm," is all she says.

We walk on in silence. Crap. That wasn't convincing at all, was it? Between this and what happened on the bus, I think that if she's really a secret werewolf then I'm well and truly on her radar now. I'm going to have to watch my step even more from here on out if I don't want to be mauled in my sleep.

Okay, Kanaya probably wouldn't maul me in my sleep. She would definitely make me sign an NDA in blood, though. I hate it when she does that.

"Wrong way," Karkat calls out from behind. I turn back, and he's standing at an intersection, his arms crossed. He jerks a thumb to his right. "Breakers, right? Bayview Ave?"

Kanaya double-checks her map. I give it a think.

"Yeah, that way's faster," I agree.

Karkat rolls his eyes.

* * *

\-- ectoBiologist [EB] began pestering turntechGodhead [TG] at 17:50 --  
  
EB: we've got our room.  
EB: i'm going to come looking.  
EB: i brought a new phone in case you really did drop it in the water like you've warned me so many times. i guess it's my fault for not listening to you!  
EB: i'm going to leave it in your cave. it's not password protected so you can use it right away.  
EB: so if you find an unexpected delivery waiting for you and me nowhere to be found, there's your explanation.  
\-- ectoBiologist [EB] is now an idle chum! --  
EB: talk to you later.  
\-- ectoBiologist [EB] is now an idle chum! --  


* * *

Once everyone is settled into our room, we disband to scout out the area in our own ways, grab supplies, whatever we need to get in in the few hours left before nightfall. These trips are always half sightseeing tour, and they might even be pleasant if not for the fact that we almost always end up having to put in overtime to make up for the lost days when we get back.

I wait for Kanaya and Karkat to wander off, double-checking that they've left the building, before I unbury my supplies from the bottom of my suitcase and repack them into the waterproof backpack. Electronics, odds and ends I thought Dave might find useful, and a wild card I hadn't been sure if I should bring: samples.

The jade green blood crust from the filters. The salt plates, now practically welded together by the dried layer of fluid. Some of Dave's own blood that I took before.

The last one sounds pointless since he's a bag of blood himself, and I mean in the most non-serial killer way, but I didn't bring it for no reason. I have no idea why, but the samples in my possession, they've been... aging, you could say. I didn't notice at first, but over the last few days they've been slowly and steadily turning deeper, darker, even beginning to precipitate on the walls of their container.

It's not as simple as deoxygenation or decomposition. I put them under the lens again, and they've _changed_. I've been seeing new morphologies in the cells where they used to be identical perfect discs, and even what looks like new chemical components in the blood. Platelets. Sugars. Hormones. I'm getting metal nuclei where there used to be none, so it's not just chemistry—entire new _elements_ are there that weren't before.

It's all incredibly strange and even more exciting.

So I get everything packed up, heave it onto my back, and head out, giving the innkeeper a nod as I pass him on the way out of the door. I sneak my way down the cobbles—as sneaky as one can be making his way across a seafront—and test my footing in the wet sand before hopping down.

The sea breeze on my skin and cool water washing between my toes is a welcome sensation, despite it being not much more than a week since I was last here. I take a deep breath, survey the horizon, and try to not think too hard about what happens if I don't find Dave.

That's when I finally notice the obvious figure standing a couple dozen yards out in the deeper water.

No, not Dave.

It's Karkat.

What is he doing here? He hates getting his feet wet. I quickly shrug off my bag, resting it between two large boulders behind me, and after a few seconds of hesitation, pad out towards him.

The troll is rooted there in the sand, the water up to his knees and lapping at his pulled-up leggings. Karkat looks distracted, staring off into the distance, but he wastes no time in detecting my approach. He spins around instantly at the sound of my sloshing feet.

"John," he greets, immediately relaxing in recognition.

"Hello," I say back. "What are you doing out here?"

"Work," he grunts briskly. "All of this wet and sand isn't good for setting up shop."

I consider his point.

"The antennae aren't waterproof, but the compellers will work if we just seal them in a bag and bury them in the sand," I say. "We might have to do some hunting for a good spot."

He grunts in assent.

His gaze drifts over the landscape. It's a good view, but I somehow doubt it's what he's inspecting. Karkat's idea of an idyllic retirement home is a castle of black stone towering over a sea of his reviewers' blood. Slowly but surely, red eyes find their way to the rocky faces off on my right and settle there.

Oh, no. No no no.

"I don't think that's a good spot," I blurt out.

Karkat turns his head. "Huh?"

I jab a finger at the cracked rock face he was looking at. "That spot. Good exposure, solid foundation for mounting the detectors, but it'll be a pain ferrying everything to and from there while keeping it all dry, and it's risky. To our health, I mean."

"Oh," he says, blinking at my unprompted commentary. "Yeah, I agree. Let's wait for Kanaya. She has a good eye for these things."

I nod.

"Let's get something to eat," he says. "I remember seeing a Chinese takeout place that looked good. Ask Kanaya if she wants anything."

"It's barely six," I point out.

"There's nothing to do here!" he grumbles, splashing back towards the shore. "Get the fish gazing out of your system now. The faster we get this done, the sooner we're out of here."

I follow.

* * *

\-- ectoBiologist [EB] began pestering turntechGodhead [TG] at 21:21 --  
  
EB: sorry that i haven't been able to come by yet.  
EB: heh, i don't know why i'm saying this since you can't read it anyway!  
EB: for the record, i guess.  
EB: i'm going to try again tonight when everyone's asleep.  
EB: wish me luck!  
EB: all of this sneaking around is some mission impossible stuff.  
EB: maybe i should tell them, but they might think i'm crazy.  
EB: and i can't shake the feeling that kanaya is up to something. she's keeping very quiet about the details of the sightings beyond what's in the docs, and i know she knows more.  
EB: ah well.  
\-- ectoBiologist [EB] is now an idle chum! --  


* * *

Nights in this town are quiet.

I lie still in the bed, listening to the odd squawk of a passing seagull and the rustle of the wind. Trolls don't snore, which is a problem, because I have no way of knowing if these two are asleep. I'm not looking forward to answering questions tomorrow about where I disappeared to all night.

It's been more than an hour since Kanaya shooed us all to sleep, citing the early morning scheduled for tomorrow as if we're not all used to four-hour sleep cycles during crunch time. I'm not sure how much longer I want to wait.

Right when I'm about to give up and slip out from under the covers, awkward morning tomorrow be damned, Karkat stirs next to me.

I freeze.

Trolls also don't move in their sleep.

Sopor is less of a necessity and more of a pleasant sleeping aid for adults, but the occasional sleep terror isn't unheard of. I haven't heard anything about Karkat experiencing anything like that, or seen it first-hand in the times we've travelled together, but of all people he would have reason to have a few fitful dreams. I try desperately to remember what I know about the etiquette of dealing with a situation like that, but come up blank.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, perhaps, his next move makes that line of thought moot.

He isn't asleep. Karkat shuffles his body sideways, the motion dragging at the blanket, and carefully drops to the floor.

The troll gets to his feet, looks around quietly, and plods away, carefully twisting the knob of the door and letting himself out. Light from the hallway trickles in for a short second, and then everything goes dark again.

I hear another door open in the hallway, then after that the sound of running water.

I consider the dilemma for a moment, and then make a snap decision. I shed the covers, slide on my sandals, and dart for the door, slipping out the same way Karkat did. He's still in the washroom. Trying not to make a single sound, I speed walk down the hallway and descend down the stairs in steps of two, pausing at the bottom of the stairwell to retrieve my bag from behind a recycling bin.

The girl on the night shift gives me a strange look as I speed through the main lobby and out the front door in a rush, giving her a slight wave as I pass. It's only once I'm out on the street, shivering in the chilly night breeze, that I slow my pace to a walk.

I'm not even in the water yet and it's already cold. This is going to suck.

I check both ways and cross the road, ducking my head in case someone's looking from the windows. It's too dark for shortcuts, so I take the extra minute to find the proper stairs down to the beach. The gravelly crunch of pebbles underfoot and the dim moonlight is all that guides my way as I make towards where I remember the underwater entrance to the sea cave was.

The seabed slopes away and gives out under me, and I start swimming. It's freezing. Not quite _hypothermia_ freezing unless I'm out here all night, but still I'm-going-to-get-a-cold-in-the-morning freezing.

I paddle up to the rock wall and run my fingers over the cracks, making sure I'm in the right place.

It occurs to me that now that I'm doing this on my own, without a friendly neighborhood merperson to watch my back, if I get caught on the rocks, I'm dead. That's it.

It hasn't happened in the dozen times I've done this—I haven't even grazed myself once—but there's a first time for everything. Plus, this time I'm doing it in the freezing cold and pitch dark of the late night. It might just be what it finally takes to do me in.

Oh well.

I take a deep breath and dive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I welcome speculation on what the hell's happening. I wouldn't be surprised if people have figured it out already.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He warned me, didn't he? If only I'd listened to Dave.

I don't drown.

When I burst out of the water on the other side I'm shivering out of my skin, but as I claw my way onto land, heaving my backpack off my shoulders, a shudder of strange warmth washes over me. I turn and lie back against a rock, clutching my elbows and waiting for my breath to come back.

I cast a look around.

Dave isn't here.

My muscles and core temperature aren't agreeing with me, but I don't have time for rest. I climb to my feet, shake myself off and stumble over to the transpiration charger. The indicator light blinks a healthy green as I depress the query button—operational. My phone, retrieved from my bag and coupled to the charging port, registers a weak but present voltage.

Crap. That was the most probable point of failure, and the other...

I navigate over to the junk electronics pile, but it's exactly as I remembered. Next to it the hardware kit is in disarray, but still no phone. I know he has some stashes on of the rock ledges under the surface, but I'm not dipping back into the water and a phone definitely isn't waterproof enough to keep there, so that leaves only one place.

I scramble over to the Important Things basin, already making excuses to myself that Dave's not precisely the most organized of people, he could have stuck it somewhere else or maybe found a special spot for it-

It's there.

The phone.

I pick it up gingerly and hold down the power button. Seconds pass, nothing happens. It's totally dead. My fingers find their way to the seam of the case and realize that the back's already been pried open before, coming away with barely a tug. Taking more care than I probably have to, I separate the device from its shell.

"Oh _thank God_," I breathe.

The inside is crusted with salt. Well, "crusted" is a strong word: there's obviously been an attempt to clean it away, but incontrovertible evidence remains that the phone has been dunked in sea water probably a few days ago and air-dried to the best of a man's ability. It's completely, totally bricked. There's no clandestine kidnapping, tragic accident or chilling conceptual erasure of an entity that exists largely as a function of contemporary societal values. Dave just dropped his phone in the ocean.

It's like a massive weight lifted from my shoulders. As I slump against my wet bag, I'm breathing properly for the first time in days. My head has been swimming with worst-case scenarios for days, but no, it's as simple as an equipment mishap. He warned me, didn't he? If only I'd listened to Dave.

My lips quirk into a smile. Maybe then I'll have fewer near-heart attacks.

But it's no time to celebrate. I need to get my delivery unloaded, swim back out through the freezing cold, find somewhere to shower and change my clothes without Kanaya or Karkat noticing or make up an excuse for why I'm sopping wet—

One thing at a time.

I turn around, crossing my legs, and unseal the bag. I'm leaving the new charger—The transpiration generator prototype seems to have held up so far past its intended design conditions, but I'm going to have to take it back at some point. Not today, it's too big to secrete away in my luggage without the others noticing, but at some point. New phone, obviously, and after a moment of hesitation, I leave my old laptop as well. It's a buggy piece of crap I never use anyway, and Dave will appreciate it. I've already factory reset it, all set up for a new user.

It's when I dump the last thing into a big pile that something strikes me. I move back over to where the broken phone was, taking a second look at the pile.

...There used to be some kind of necklace thing in here, right?

It's gone.

I'm 70% sure that's a powerful magic relic or something. Not more than the spooky seashell that's still nestled in its spot, but like, uncommon artifact grade at the very least. Dave has no idea what it does, so he's not taking it anywhere for no reason. Something's up.

Apprehension prickles the back of my neck.

I might have celebrated too soon

Exactly as I come to this realization, something splashes behind me.

I whip around expecting a familiar face, Dave's name already on the tip of my tongue, my face breaking into a smile, but the hacking cough of water clearing from lungs, those _horns_—

That's not Dave.

"_Karkat_?" I gasp.

"John?" he growls.

"What are you doing here?" we say in unison. Does he know? How would he? Did he notice me leaving the building?

"Are you following me?" I squawk. But even if he was, how would he know out where I went? The entrance to this place is practically invisible, even in the day!

One of Karkat's eyes twitches in indignation. "What the fuck are you yammering about? You were knocked out like a log when I left the room! Are _you_ stalking me?"

"I was here first!" I point out the obvious.

Karkat crawls out of the water. "Why are you taking a dip in this frigid rock bladder in the middle of the night anyway? How do you know about this place?" He strips his baggy shirt off, trembling in the cold, and tries to wring out the wet cloth.

"I asked you first," I object. "How did you get here? And you're the one that shouldn't be swimming in these temperatures! You know mid-spectrums don't thermoregulate well and you're going to..."

He's on the floor, curled against a rock, hugging his chest with shaky arms.

"Goddammit!" I curse. "Take care of yourself!"

I dig my change of clothes out of my backpack—I was going to change into them when I got back so I wouldn't have to rummage through my suitcase in the dead of the night, but it doesn't look like that's happening any time soon—and toss the plastic bag at the troll. It hits him in the face, and he apparently has enough fight left in him to shoot me a rude glare.

"Do you _actually_ need me to put on your clothes for you?" I growl, but there's a kernel of worry behind my words. I don't think a few minutes could be enough for hypothermia to properly hit, no matter how rubbish his biology is, but all I know about troll metabolism is from undergrad bio and I really don't trust myself to make any definitive statements.

To my relief, Karkat isn't at that point yet and grudgingly pulls the T-shirt out of the bag, pulling it on without any complaints, followed by a thick sweater that he has to squish himself into. I grimace at how my overstretched clothing clings to his frame. I'll probably not be asking for that back.

He's stopped, but my eyes trace down to his drenched pants. I cock my head and narrow my eyes at him. The troll predictably bristles.

"If you catch a cold I'm not picking up your slack on the field report."

Call me hypocritical—I'm drenched and freezing myself—but I've been doing this a lot for the last week and a half, I'm human, and it really is warmer than I expected in here. The earth retains heat, I guess. He, on the other hand, is at real risk of a serious adverse reaction. Rolling his eyes, Karkat changes into my sweatpants while I politely avert my eyes.

"_Now_ can you tell me what the grub-flipping fuck you're doing in a dank cave out in the middle of nowhere?" Karkat grouches once he's dryly clothed.

I huff. "I'm... dropping off stuff. This is... uh, a storage. Storage place."

"You're using a sea cave for mini storage," he says flatly.

"Okay, so what are _you_ doing here, genius?" I lob back at him.

"How the fuck would I know?"

I open my mouth and pause. He stares at me. We both sit and contemplate that statement for a moment.

"Well..." I start slowly. "Typically-

"I don't know!" Karkat barks. "I had a prophetic dream about it, is that what you want me to say? It was a hunch!"

"A hunch made you dive into an underwater rock crack in the middle of the night with no equipment, no assistance—do you know the fatality statistics on cave diving? I mean, I don't, but I know they're _super high_!" I'm at a loss for words. Karkat really makes me tear my hair out sometimes for such a smart guy.

"Thanks for the concern, asshole," he grumbles, hunching his shoulders and looking down. "Didn't you do that exact same thing?"

"No!" I defend. "I had help!"

Karkat's head snaps up to me, sudden focus in his eyes. "Help? From who?"

I clamp my mouth shut, but that line alone seems to have spurred him into action. The troll rises to his feet, pacing over and surveying the junk laid out over the cave. "What the hell is all this garbage?" His eyes catch on the long black tube standing out of the water. "Is that the TEG demo? What's that doing here?"

Ah, shit.

"Salinity field test," I lie.

Karkat doesn't look convinced. He stalks over to the generator, crouches down and wipes moisture off the control panel, prodding a button. His eyes slide to the small rock depression next to him. The Important Things™ pit. Crap, the unlight aura magic shell is in there, and it's obviously supernatural unless there have been some incredible breakthroughs in optics recently. If he sees it—or if he _doesn't_—do I pretend it's not there, or...

I clamber up to get a look. Karkat's fingers are reaching down, and I have half a mind to stop him because it's quite rude to mess with someone's stuff without asking, but curiosity stays my mouth. I need to know. To my surprise, he brushes the shell to a side, barely giving it a second glance.

It's the ancient crusty laptop that his hand finds, the one that was already here when I first came. He lifts it out slowly, the miscellanea stacked on top sliding off easily, and turns the device around. It's my first time seeing it out of its hole as well, so my eyes follow as his fingers ghost over the ports, swiping away particles of dirt and salt.

He sets the computer down abruptly.

Karkat rises to his full height. I stumble to my feet at the same time. His glare turns to me, and there's something angry and unspeakably intense in it. He takes a step closer.

"What the fuck is going on here?" he demands, grabbing me by the collar even as I try to take a step back. He's not choking me, but my breath halts in my throat anyway as his teeth bare at me, blood-red eyes burning with frustration. His grip is too warm for someone who was just shivering moments ago.

Maybe there's something in how I flinch, because next second he instantly lets go of me and backpedals, hands relaxing and clenching in jolts.

"Fuck. Sorry," he mutters.

I adjust the wet and crumpled neck of my shirt nervously. My heart is beating out of my chest.

"What... do you mean?"

"This town," he growls, turning and running a hand through his wet mess of hair. "It makes me want to rip my bulge out by the root and strangle myself with it. It was so long ago, why am I..."

"You've been here before?" I ask.

"I _lived_ here," he hisses.

_That_ captures my attention. Karkat has never talked about his past, not even at my poking and prodding, not even drunk out of his mind or dead on his feet from seventy-two hours of sleep deprivation. He doesn't have a lusus and never had because of his blood, but that's all I know. This is news to me.

"You never told me," I say, unable to keep a note of reproach from slipping into my voice. Now that I think of it, he's been acting a little too familiar with this area to have only studied it through maps and guides. I thought he was simply extraordinarily well-prepared, but it's more than that, it seems.

"It's none of your business."

"So... whatever problem you're having..."

"I never said there's a problem," he grinds.

I continue regardless, lines drawing together in my mind. "Would it be—purely hypothetically speaking—memory loss?"

He twists around. "What do you know about that?" he demands.

"Is it?"

He exhales.

"Fuck, I don't know. Not exactly. I haven't _forgotten_ anything." He rubs his eyes. "The opposite. I'm remembering things. Different things. Like I'm dragging up suppressed memories but they're not a dark history of wiggler abuse or anything, they're these completely fucking innocuous things like..."

He snarls, trying to find words.

"...shitty games and places and this _stupid clandestine trash dump what in the name of my rotting ancestor is my distorted protein chute trying to express_."

"I take offence to that," a voice bubbles from behind Karkat.

The troll turns and almost falls over.

It's Dave.

The merman is lounging behind him, resting on his arms atop the rock ledge, the tips of his tail fins poking out of the surface and swishing through the water. There's an undercurrent of annoyance in his voice despite the joking tone, either really because of the comment or because of the uninvited visitor, but I couldn't care less about that right now.

_He's fine. He's here._

I stumble forwards, laughter bursting from my lungs as I lower to my knees. Karkat's on the ground as well, having dropped on his own ass in shock.

"Dave!" I say with a grin.

"John!" he says, mirroring my exclamation, but sarcasm aside, I can tell he's pleased to see me.

"You..." starts Karkat.

He crawls closer. There's a blend of disbelief and abject confusion spreading over his face. He reaches towards the merman with an unsteady hand.

"Dave?" he whispers.

Dave turns to the troll with an uncomprehending blink at first, but bit by bit, recognition seems to flicker in his eyes.

"Karkat?" he mutters.

Do they _know_ each other?

"Dave," Karkat repeats. His mouth has fallen open. "Dave Strider."

"Karkat Tokvyn?"

"I haven't used that name since I was fifteen," Karkat mutters. Dave's hand closes around the troll's, his thumb slipping through the gray fingers, squeezing their palms together as if making that they're real. "I... I don't understand," Karkat stutters. "You're real."

"You remember me," Dave says. "_You remember me._"

"I do?"

Dave leaps out of the water, hugging Karkat tight to his chest and getting your clothes all wet again. His tail slaps against the hard floor as the troll is bowled over, Dave's arms cushioning his body so his head doesn't dash against the rocks. Karkat freezes up, going practically catatonic in the excited merman's unyielding embrace.

Is he...? No way, it's too much of a litany of coincidences. But just look at how Dave's going! Man, you're not jealous, but... okay, you're jealous. You never got such an enthusiastic reception before.

"Geddofme," Karkat grunts.

"You're as much of a lame-ass fun massacre as always," Dave informs him. "But holy shit, you've grown. What have you been eating?"

"Why did I... _How_ did I forget? What the shit-lobbing fuck happened? Did I trip down a flight of stairs and bash out half my memory cortices?"

Karkat props himself back up. His legs are still stuck under a hundred pounds of Dave, but he manages to get himself upright, at least.

Dave answers cheerfully, "Oh, that's normal. I warned you."

The troll scowls. "If the next words out of your mouth are 'I warned you about the stairs', I will do something both of us will deeply regret- _holy fuck you wrote Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff_."

"I warned you about the memory loss, remember?" Dave corrects, ignoring the SBaHJ line and peering closer at Karkat's eyes.

"You warned me about the..." Karkat trails off. "You did. Fuck."

"Yep."

"How much did I forget?" he mutters, staggered. Slowly but surely, his face drains of color. Karkat clutches his horns.

"I promised you," he whispers, something _breaking_ in his expression. "I _promised_. I'm a fucking disgrace to society. I'm the most tragically awful rectal prolapse to droop out of the Mother Grub's distended asshole."

"Dude," Dave says. "Not your fault. We hashed this out ten years ago, Karkwaffle." _Karkwaffle?_ "If you're a rectal prolapse it's only from being fucked by the massive barbed cat-dick of Skaia's douchey machinations. No point crying over spilt milk, so let's get that gastrointestinal mishap treated at a hospital, 'kay? Don't just leave it dangling out there like a Christmas ornament, we have people over."

"I left you," Karkat mumbles. "I... You pestered me. You pestered me for years, I remember now, I _swear_... fuck, Dave, I swear I didn't see, I didn't mean to— I—"

He's crying, I realize, and it's like a punch to the gut. I've seen Karkat cry, what—two times in total, before this? The ugly red tears dripping down his face make me lurch, but I don't know what to say. I don't know what to do. He's one of my best friends, but we don't have that kind of relationship, and I feel useless, and it's horrible, like he's bleeding out in front of my eyes and I can't even figure out where to put pressure on the wound.

Dave's eyes are wet as well, and not from the sea. "Karkat. It's cool," he sniffs. "I know. I know, don't... shh." He presses his forehead to Karkat's and clutches the troll's face, running fingers over red-stained cheeks. He gives a few gentle pats. "Shhhh," he soothes.

You shouldn't be gawking like this, every rule of social etiquette says so, but you can't bring yourself to tear your eyes away.

"You're not my moirail," Karkat snorts, and choked as it is, for a moment he almost sounds back to his normal grumpy self.

Dave chuckles feebly. "Oh? I don't remember breaking up with you. In fact, I remember you stringently insisting on _not_ doing that, so as far as I'm concerned, I am." He pauses, before continuing with a harmless smirk, "In fact, if you've been papping other people, you've technically been cheating on me. Have you been cheating on me, Karkat?"

To both of your surprise, the troll's fists clench and his back hunches over. "I'm sorry, I'm so goddamn sorry. You don't deserve this. I should go and drown myself in a rancid waste sewer-"

"_No!_"

"-then maybe I can finally hammer into my head what a gigantic shit mountain I am and the world will be better off with one less born-again Jesus dipshit who can't hold onto a formative memory to save his life."

"I was making a joke! Jegus, Karkat, I don't care who you've been paledating. I can back off if you're not comfortable with me being on top of you, how about that-"

"No!" Karkat yelps as Dave tries to withdraw. A gray-skinned hand darts out to clutch the merman's bicep. "Stay," he says quietly.

Dave hesitates, but complies.

He looks at me and that feeling is back again in full force, like I'm the intruder, the third wheel in this scene.

"Oh. Hey, John." He wipes his eyes. "Sorry that we've been ignoring you. Got to let the waterworks run their course first."

"It's okay," I say, giving him a weak smile. "You two are cute. Sorry for intruding."

And they are! If we're talking quadrants then me and him were leaning hearts anyway, and diamonds is a completely different sector! It's not a demotion, only a... reframing. I'm totally alright with this. It's just I'm used to having Dave all to myself, and Dave and Karkat seem to be really tight, or they were, so... I feel a little left out, that's all.

That's all.

"Karkat's the one I told you about. The one I knew when I was small?"

I nod. "I figured that out. So... you're moirails?"

"We were back then," Dave says. "Now..."

He looks back at Karkat, who's still recovering. The troll glances around for a second. "Fuck it. Let's do it," he sighs, and it's unambiguous what he's talking about. Dave's smile broadens into a grin.

"So we still are, I guess." the merman confirms with a shrug. "Or we are again? Amnesia makes a mess of timekeeping."

"Well, believe it or not, he's also the genetics expert in my lab and my super good friend," I sigh. "The one _I_ told you about. It's crazy how much coincidence this is."

Dave blinks. "He is? But I thought you said..." His eyes turn to Karkat, who grimaces.

"I changed my name," he says shortly. "I'm Karkat Vantas now."

He did?

"Why?" Dave questions. I silently echo his question. I didn't know Karkat used to be called something else, and he never brought it up.

"My old surname was randomly assigned by the government," he grumbles. "But it turned out I'm the descendant of the Signless, so I took his name. Worst decision of my life."

Oh. I hadn't even realized that would be an issue! It's down to the lusus to give wigglers a last name, which we think is based on a bunch of genetic markers and pheromone stuff that nobody really understands, so of course Karkat wouldn't get the right one with a parent, but I never thought about what that meant for ancestral matching.

"You're troll Jegus," Dave says. "You're literally troll Jegus."

"He is," I confirm with glee. "Did you know he has a cult? A pretty small one and he wants nothing to do with it, but it totally exists. They get on the news now and then."

Karkat scowls. "Yeah, go ahead, rub it in. The chosen one, reduced to guest starring in shitty TV shows and getting negged by Nature peer-reviewers."

Oh man, not this self-depreciatory rubbish again.

"Come on! You're a beloved TV personality and have two published papers in Nature," I correct, nudging him in the side, which elicits an indignant yelp. "Stop being so down on yourself."

"B-list TV personality," he insists, but not disputing me. "And I sure don't get paid like I'm published in Nature," he adds in a mutter. "I don't think you understand how this works."

Eh?

"How what works?" I ask, baffled.

"Forget it." Karkat shifts, looking away. "Uh, Dave? You can get off me now if you like. I know what I said, but you're actually heavier than a sack of rocks-"

The merman pirouettes off his tail and flops into the sea, spraying you all in the face with frigid water. His head surfaces, trying to shake the hair out of his face.

He stretches out, tail flexing under water, sending ripples over the surface, and I can hear his joints cracking.

"Yeah, I didn't know if I wanted to mention it, but it was supremely uncomfortable for everyone involved after the first ten seconds?" he admits. "Man, I'm going to get a cramp in my tail."

"Quit whining," Karkat chuckles. "You don't get cramps. What the fuck is going on in your tail anyway? The fins are-"

"-pointing the wrong way!" I finish for him. "That's what I said! His bone structure is complete nonsense. It's a shame we can't do a proper X-ray."

"Didn't Scratchworks just release a mobile X-ray device rated for aquatic use?" Karkat points out.

"Oh god. There's two of them now," Dave groans.

"Fuck off," Karkat snorts, but he's smiling ear-to-ear.

Sighing, he flops back onto the ground. I cast my eyes up, just enjoying the company. There's dew gathering on the ceiling. It wasn't there last time I was here, so I wonder if it's a change in the weather or something like that. Sea currents?

"I missed you," Karkat mumbles.

Dave gifts him a raised middle finger. "Missed you too."

"I missed you," the troll repeats. "Even before, when I didn't remember, there was always this _hole_, you know?" Karkat shudders. "John knows what a colossal fuckass I was in college."

"It is true," I agree, nodding sagely. "Though that implies that he isn't a colossal fuckass anymore, which-"

Karkat shoves me, and I go down laughing.

Dave looks between me and Karkat.

"You... know each other real well, don't you?" he comments.

I glance at Karkat and find him returning the look at me.

"I guess," I say with a noncommittal shrug. Karkat snorts, adding, "Egbert's a nosy bulge sniffer."

A thought occurs to me. "There's still Kanaya to introduce you to! I don't know if you saw my messages—no, of course you didn't, I already know that—but you'll like her."

"Ah," Dave winces. "Yeah, about that..."

"Will she-" Karkat frowns, as if taking a pause to trawl his fragmented re-memories. "-will she be able to see you?" He pauses. "Will _I_ remember you if I leave? I... you said..."

Huh. It looks like the recovery isn't complete. I still don't know why he's remembering again, or why I didn't forget, for that matter—Dave was totally adamant that there was no way I would be able to keep my memories—but it's clearly a work-in-progress. I frown. Them getting back together is great, but all it's done is raise more questions.

"Some stuff has been happening while you were away," Dave admits with an awkward rub of the back of his neck, addressing me. "Veil stuff. I have someone to introduce you to myself-"

He's interrupted. Of course he's interrupted.

A purple and pink form shoots out of the pool of water faster than a speeding arrow and twists mid-air, tackling me into Karkat. We go tumbling over each other, but the interloper's hands find our necks before we go rolling too far and wrestle human and troll onto the ground, our faces slamming into sandy grit. The impact drives the air from my lungs, robbing me of the capacity to even call out.

Out of the corner of my eyes I can glimpse the face of a thin, pale woman with short dangling hair and stunning violet eyes. In the background Dave is shouting something at her that I can't make out in my daze. Two blades are hovering in the air, vibrating and surrounded in an electric purple energy, one above my head and the other above Karkat's.

Her voice comes out as a vicious hiss.

"What did you do to Kanaya?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, who called it? ;)


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I knew that would come back to bite me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter! It's a big one compared to the others. You know how you can look at a word so long that it doesn't look like a word anymore? Well, I've been staring at this chapter for so long that I can barely tell if it's any good, because I wanted to get it out before the chapter I have scheduled for my other ongoing fic, so I practically cranked out the first few drafts all in one day.
> 
> Anyway, enjoy a finale in which I cram in way too much world building and developments.

"Nothing!" I rasp with the last of the air in my lungs. "I don't..."

Karkat is thrashing next to me, trying to pry the fingers off his neck.

"Get the fuck off!" he snarls, angling his head away from the looming blade. The woman's eyes narrow into slits as her pupils flit between me and the troll.

"Karkat?" she asks, half-question, half-statement.

"Yes, it's me, you crazy fucking witch!"

Her grip loosens a fraction, and I strain for air, almost choking on my own spit.

"Rose." I wheeze, if it is her. "Please let go."

Dave's voice passes out from behind the mermaid. "Rose, they're friends, they work together! John wouldn't hurt Kanaya!"

"You have the stench of her blood on you," she hisses, but she seems less certain of herself now. "One does not simply spill the blood of a rainbow drinker on _accident_. Explain yourself. Now."

Her _blood_? I knew that would come back to bite me.

"Wasn't me!" I croak. "She was doing blood tests herself. I took the residue from the fractionator, I didn't touch her! And I'm not trying to do any spooky witchcraft blood rituals with it! I don't know any!"

"She drew her own blood," Rose repeats. "And Kanaya left the evidence around for just anyone to steal?"

"No it was in the middle of the night and I scared her off when I showed up and then I checked the machine and saw it by accident-"

My babbling panic seems to do the trick, because she finally eases off me, the blades drawing back with her. I gasp for my breath and curl up coughing, finally able to breathe properly.

"You're not lying," she concedes, letting Karkat up as well, who wastes no time launching into an avalanche of swearing and insults. "Forgive me for the interrogation. You can never be too careful with security."

"You could have asked!" Karkat roars. "With words! Like a normal person instead of an unhinged trash beast with anger management issues you could buy a life sentence in a psychiatric ward for! Did all that consorting with the Horrorkrakens of the Darkest Depths finally chip the last veneer of stability from your decomposing think pan?"

Rose turns to the simmering troll and cocks her head. "Well, the years of peace and quiet were pleasant while it lasted," she mutters.

Karkat rears in offence.

"Yeah, guess what? I didn't miss your condescending pseudo-intellectual babble when I was a kid, and I certainly didn't sign up to be lectured by a wannabe psychotherapist now! I'm the fucking doctor now, Lalonde, so sit your scaly posterior cheeks down on the reclining chair and shut the fuck up!" Despite the acerbic words, there's hurt in his voice.

Rose blinks, taken aback.

"I'll clarify—that was an insincere statement, meant to be be taken in the opposite of its face value."

Karkat rasps something rude and unintelligible.

"This is commonly known in colloquial language as 'sarcasm'," she continues, "An oft-used device in-."

"I know!" Karkat growls, flushing, but he's lost the brittle edge, instead now tinging with a hint of embarrassment. "My company is stellar and we all know it. No need to sing my praises."

Okay, he is never going to stop complaining if I don't change the topic, so I take it upon myself to properly introduce us. Dusting the sand off myself, which is harder than it seems with wet clothes, I sit up.

"Hi Rose!" I say.

She peers at me curiously.

"John, I take it," she says, nodding at me. "I suppose Dave has told you all about me in sickeningly slanderous detail."

"Well, that's a way to put it!" I say. The mermaid flops towards the water like a beached whale before throwing herself in to join Dave. It looks ridiculous, but I refrain from commenting on it. "But we've already..."

That's when I catch Dave's widening smile. My gaze flicks between him and an expectant Rose.

"You didn't tell her!" I accuse.

Rose gives Dave a suspicious look. "Tell me what?" she demands, summoning the flying blades to her with a wave. She snatches them out of the air and stows them in the belt around her waist.

He snorts. "It's funnier this way!"

"What is he talking about?" Rose grumbles.

Well, if he's already started with it, I can't waste the set up. Sighing despite the huge grin on my face, I crawl forwards and stick a hand out to Rose. She eyes my hand suspiciously like I might have hidden a buzzer in there or something. So paranoid!

(I need to figure out how to make buzzers waterproof.)

"My chum handle's ectoBiologist!" I declare.

Rose stops. Her mouth drops, her eyes pause.

"You..."

Her head whips around to Dave. "Why didn't you say so?" she hisses through Dave's roaring laughter. "This is ridiculous!"

I wiggle my fingers, reminding her of the yet-unshaken hand.

"I guess you're aware that I'm TT, then," she groans, taking my offered palm, still shooting eye daggers at Dave. Her body sinks down into the water, leaving only her face poking out of the surface. "God, how long has it been? This is... wow. I can't believe it. Your'e EB?"

"John, you're shaking someone's hand one minute after she threatened you with violent disembowelment," Karkat informs me.

"Don't worry! We're old friends!" I reassure him. "It's all cool!"

"You're not old friends," Karkat grumbles. "_We're_ old friends. I know for a fact these two don't have any other old friends because they're losers and unfriendable dipshits."

I roll my eyes. "Internet friends!" I clarify.

"Internet-" Karkat's mouth stops working mid-sentence. "You're- you're EB. We trolled the shit out of you. Wait, I already knew that before. You're the idiot who types in blue text that Dave kept pestering. The Con Air asshole that send him those ridiculous shades and..."

"Wait, hold your horses, stop that braying, slap a restraining order on that glorified donkey," Dave splutters. "You're the one that was trolling us?"

"Fuck."

"You didn't know?" I frown. "But then-"

"Can we all shut up and forget what I said?" Karkat moans.

"Did you seriously launch a trolling campaign against our session because you were _jealous_?" Rose says, sounding vaguely entertained.

"_No_-"

"You are such an asshole," Dave laughs.

"I was helping you dipshits," Karkat snarls, scowling in embarrassment. "It's not my fault you were too stupid to comprehend the genius advice of a veteran player."

"Dude," I snort. "You were trying to backseat Jade's build and you hadn't even read the wiki page on the Witch skill tree."

"Her strategy was unsustainable!"

"Well, duh! That's the whole point of a scratch run! Plus, you weren't even paying attention to the game outside of finding stuff to yell at us for. You were hate-coming onto me the whole time!"

"Will you let go of that already! What about you, Mr. 'Not a Homosexual'?" Karkat mocks, making quotes with his fingers. Come on, can he not sound so _bitter_? "How did that turn out? Don't think I don't see you and Dave making heart eyes at each other!"

I fight down a blush. "Technically I'm not! I was a confused kid! Plus, you're one to talk—at least I grew out of my thing!"

"What do you mean?"

I groan, burying my face in my arms, all too aware that we're airing our dirty laundry in front of a greatly amused pair of merpeople. "I'm not totally oblivious, you know."

"I still don't-"

I hiss, "You know what I mean!"

"No I don't!" he growls angrily.

I don't mean to say it, I don't know why I do. Maybe it's a convoluted attempt to one-up Karkat, maybe it's an innocent slip of the tongue, or maybe I'm simply tired of dancing around the issue. Either way, it just comes spilling out of my mouth.

"_Ifyouwanttoaskmeoutthenjustdoitalready!_"

The whole cave goes completely, absolutely quiet.

Okay, maybe I'm embellishing a bit with regard to my obliviousness. I only just figured this out, like, three minutes ago. Still, it's a start.

Seconds pass.

Glancing at my current matesprit (because apparently we're going with that system now?), I add, "Um. If Dave's okay with that, of course."

Wait, go back, what am I saying? Karkat hasn't even said anything yet! What is he agreeing to? What am I agreeing to?

Dave flashes me a thumbs up that I'm too confused to interpret.

"I-" Karkat's mouth flaps with no words coming out. "I don't- I didn't think you dated pitch."

"_I don't!_"

"Well then why the hell did you find the need bring it up, you shitmongering asshat?"

"_I don't know!_" I wail, burying my face in my hands.

"Tsundere," Dave stage-whispers.

"Jesus Christ, Egbert. Do you want me to strangle myself in bulge-throttled shame? Is that your endgame, to keep leading me on and dashing my blackened heart out on the rocks like medieval lusii executing their wiggling mutant filth in an endless soul-rending cycle until the planet is swallowed by the bloated carcass of our moribund sun?"

Oh fuck. Karkat genuinely sounds upset now, and that's the last thing I meant to happen. I was trying to make a point, not... whatever this is!

"No, that's not what I..." I scramble for words. "Let's talk about this some other time? In private?"

"Oh, great," he snaps. "More fuel for the humiliation pile. It's like 12th Perigee Eve come early!"

Fuck fuck fuck fuck

"I'll give it a try!" rushes out of my mouth before I can catch myself.

Karkat is gaping at me like I slapped him in the face. My expression probably looks equally gobsmacked.

"If you're just humoring me out of some twisted pity, you can-"

"No!" I insist, throwing the last bit of sense I have to the wind. "Look. I don't _do_ the whole black romance thing, but... I can make an exception. Just for you."

Oh god, I didn't mean for that to come out so sappy.

"Tentatively," I add.

"John, you don't take back a love confession like th- urgk! rkh." Rose clamps a hand over Dave's mouth. Karkat flips him the bird with the most concentrated vitriol you've ever seen packed into a mere finger gesture.

After an elongated pause, Karkat says, "We discuss this later."

This is really awkward.

I cover my face. "Later," I agree.

This is so incredibly embarrassing.

Rose slowly removes her hand from Dave's face, an exasperated look on her face. "Now that couples counseling hour is over, can we transition to a more productive topic?" she suggests.

"Thank you," I sigh, glancing over to Dave, still afraid that I messed up by _promising to date Karkat in front of my current partner_, which I have to reiterate, _why the fuck did I do that?_

Rose begins, "So-"

"Wait," Karkat interjects with a start, as if suddenly remembering something incredibly important. "Before that. John. When did you meet Dave?"

"Oh, I haven't told you yet, yeah. It was the start of my last vacation. So around two weeks ago," I approximate. "Hey, by the way, did you know his blood plasma is amolecular? Or... was, at least."

"No, no, I don't care about that," he says, agitated. "That's long enough, so why didn't you forget? Why did I start remembering again? You said the memories don't unblock," he directs to Rose, wringing his hands. "I don't get it. The timing, all of it, it makes no sense."

I frown. This is a strange change of subject from what we just came from.

"Is it important to know right now?"

"Yes, it is vitally important! We have to stop it from happening another time!" Karkat hisses. "I can't do this again! I've had enough of my think pan being clawed out of its bone shell to last me several lifetimes, thank you! What if we go back to our rooms and they're gone again? Hell, we could spontaneously keel over with a stroke at any time for all we know!"

"That actually has to do with what I was going to say," Rose interrupts, teeth gleaming in her smile. "But first, let me fetch Kanaya. She's right outside."

* * *

"I almost forgot about Kanaya," Karkat mumbles after Rose is gone.

Dave shoots him a questioning look.

"Is..." The troll's eyes dart to me. "Is she really an arctic werewolf?"

The merman breaks down into uncontrollable laughter, which draws an offended jerk from Karkat. "What the fuck is an... _arctic werewolf?_"

I blush. "It was just an offhand comment! I don't know what she is! But she is something, right? How does Rose know her?"

It's pretty obvious that she _does_, from how enthusiastically she came to her defense.

"She's a rainbow drinker," Dave chuckles. Oh, right—Rose did mention that. "Ripoff troll vampire, basically. Rose said that she found her separated from her research group and turned her so she wouldn't freeze to death."

Wait, Rose turned her?

"Rose is a vampire?" I ask with a frown. "A vampire mermaid? That's allowed?"

"What? No." Dave blinks, confused. "Troll vampirism isn't infectious like that. It's a rare jadeblood power. All Rose did was express it."

"How did _you_ know she was magic, then?" Karkat questions me.

I shrug. "As I told Rose. She was snooping around the lab at night and I almost caught her. I checked out the samples she left behind and they were giving the same crazy results as Dave's, so it was pretty obvious."

"And that's the blood that set Rose on us like a rabid hound," he says flatly.

"Yep!" I admit. "I have some of Dave's blood here too! We have the microscope in our room so you could take a look at it later. It's actually really interesting stuff! I think if we can isolate and reproduce some of those effects they might have some novel applications in hydraulics."

I don't have very high hopes, though; it probably loses its magic after a while. But it's still fascinating as a case study even if I can't pass it on to the engineers.

"Dave, you'd better watch out if this guy starts mumbling anything about a basement torture dungeon and kidnapping you to drain your precious plasma," Karkat informs the merman.

"Hey, what if it's in a fun way?" I protest.

"It's a cover," Karkat hisses, cupping a hand around the side of his mouth. "If you don't want to be trafficked off to the highest bidder and then skinned alive and screaming to the last inch of your fishy life, swim away as fast as you can. You still have time. I'll hold him off."

"So. Kanaya," I start. "Are she and Rose..."

I trail off, letting them get the picture.

"Oh, they're totally dating," Dave informs me. "For sure. One hundred percent. As sure as the Oxford English Dictionary. Surer than the rocket scientists behind the moon landing. So sure that ISO is redefining surety standards in units of microRosenayas."

Karkat sniffs. "Rosemary is a better ship name."

Dave gasps.

"_Genius_. I rate you eighteen milliRosemaries."

Rose chooses that moment to burst out of the water next to her brother, coughing, "Someone talking about me?"

"We have a new SI base unit named in your honor," I tell her.

Kanaya breaks the surface next to Rose, shaking droplets off as she bobs to an steady depth in the pool. "Sorry?" she asks, brushing back a lock of wet black hair. "Oh. Hello, John and Karkat."

"Hi!" I greet.

"For the record, I'm deeply offended that you didn't deign to share that you were transformed into an unkillable creature of the day," the other troll grumbles. Wow, is that how you say hello to a friend, Karkat?

"How did you call her here, Rose?" I wonder aloud.

"Magic," Rose says simply, which isn't really an answer. "Now that everyone is present, I'll cover this briefly. We didn't arrange for you to come here only for a pleasure trip."

"Wait, you tricked us here deliberately?" Karkat squawks, glaring at Kanaya, who looks remarkably unperturbed. "Holy shit. Was the report even real? Could you not have, you know, _talked to us like a sane troll_? What are all of you crazy broads so hell-bent on doing everything in the worst conceivable way? Is Vriska in on this or-"

"Please, Karkat," she sighs. "I will make my apologies and beg for forgiveness later, but can we focus right now? This is important."

"We're taking down the Veil," Rose states casually. Okay, so-

What?

I blink.

Karkat splutters.

Kanaya clambers out of the water and sits down on the ledge while you're distracted by the dramatic revelation.

"Veil, as in..." I start.

"The magical barrier separating the mortal and supernatural worlds. The selective memory effect filtering interactions and mediating the suppression of recollection. The probabilistic manipulation that passively maintains the secrecy of paranormal communities."

She pauses, giving us a second to absorb.

"Technically, we already took it down," Kanaya injects, poking Rose in the arm. "To be precise, I watched Rose do it, because I was not part of the original plan and she only inducted me into the ranks of the empirically dubious because I almost died failing to adhere to the safety protocols of the expedition."

"Yeah, why would you do something as pan-crushingly stupid as that?" Karkat growls. "Are you trying to get yourself killed?"

"I'm fine now," Kanaya insists.

"Hold on," I say. "You said you already took it down? Is that why I kept my memories, and why Karkat got his back?"

"Yes," Rose confirms. "People around the world that had their memories blocked will be gradually having them restored. Note, however, that this only applies to people whom Skaia has permitted interaction with the paranormal, and were subsequently deallocated after prolonged lack of contact, but not to the vast majority of people whose perception was outright blocked in the first place."

"It's why she went to the Arctic," Dave adds with a grimace. "She saw a vision about it. The fallout is going to be all hells of trouble, but it's never a good idea to run against the prophecies. Next thing you know there's sharks nipping at your heels as you surf a tidal wave into the Gulf of Mexico, firing wand shots at venomous seagulls thirsting for human flesh. True facts."

Huh. It's a little disappointing that I'm not a one-in-a-million miracle case, but it is a reassurance to know that I probably won't be blanking out any time soon.

"It had to be done," Rose sighs. "Skaia's power has been waning for millennia, and it's reaching the point that keeping up the Veil is an unconscionable drain on its resources. With the divide lifted, we've bought the otherworldly species another dozen centuries."

That isn't ominous at all.

"So the magic stuff is just going to be a thing now? Out to the public?"

"Not only that," Kanaya notes. "Rose has informed me that the Veil served a purpose beyond mere obfuscation. It doubled as a divider between the physical and metaphysical, and with it gone, the lines will begin to blur. What once was pure concept manifest will start taking cues from physical law. The extent of practical consequences on that front is yet to be seen."

"You mean..." I lick my lips, thinking. "Like, things becoming more realistic? More physical? In the 'obeys physics' sense."

"That is an element of it," Rose agrees.

"Dave's blood," I say slowly. "I've been running tests on it in the last week, and it's been changing! It was like an ideal mixture of hemocytes in goop before, but now there's new compounds, new cells... I thought it was normal, but is it also from what you did?"

Rose and Kanaya exchange a look I can't really decipher.

"That's good, right?" I hazard a guess. "It's working?"

Karkat grumbles, "It sounds outrageously dangerous. Do we have to start worrying about organ rejection? Does a fish liver work with human blood? You Frankenstein monstrosities can't possibly be biologically viable."

"The changes are faster than we expected," Rose admits. "It means we're going to have to accelerate our timetable accordingly."

"There's more?" I ask.

"We need Karkat for this next step," the mermaid says.

"Oh, _what now?_"

"Perhaps I ought to let Kanaya to explain."

Eyes turn to the female troll, who looks mildly surprised to be thrust into the limelight. After a hesitant pause, she shrugs. "All I know is second-hand from Rose, but I suppose that it would be appropriate. Before that, though, would Rose be so kind as to quickly dry us off?"

Rose snaps her fingers. The heat in the cave soars, wicking away the moisture in my clothes faster than ought to be physically possible, and when the temperature settles I feel drier than you've ever been. Plus the ceiling has finally stopped its incessant dripping. That is such a cool trick.

"Karkat, how much do you know about your ancestor?" Kanaya says, cutting right to the chase.

"Wait, I didn't know about this part," Dave chokes. "You want him because he's troll Jesus?"

"The _second coming_ of troll Jesus," Rose corrects.

"I know what high school history crammed down my chafed, deformed throat, which is fuck all," Karkat answers with a scowl. He doesn't like talking about this. "He was a religious icon, headed the reform movement that led trollkind out of the caverns, and then we got stuck with you filthy yammering flesh bags for the thousands of years since."

"Trolls used to be a mythical species," Kanaya says.

Me and Karkat stare at her.

"Sure," he growls. "Who gives a fuck anymore? How many more earth-shattering revelations do you have left to clobber me with before the hour's up? What's next, platypuses are alien invaders that turned feral after stranding on Earth? Humans are evolved from ducks, not apes? Ram me with all you've got! My waste chute is still inflamed and gaping from your violent ministrations of facts and logic; I can take it!"

Kanaya sighs.

"The Signless was a Seer, much like Rose. He foresaw the downfall of his people if their violent conquests ran to their inevitable end, and took matters into his own hands. Skaia offered a path to salvation, but it came at a terrible cost that he ended up paying with his own blood."

"I know the scripture," Karkat snaps.

"What the scripture omits is that the path was not a physical passageway out of the underground, nor a metaphorical battle of politics and power, but a complex magical ritual of unimaginable power. The Signless' brilliant solution was to our decline was to drag the entire troll species kicking and screaming to the other side of the Veil, sealing us into physical flesh and binding our souls to form."

Kanaya's eyes charge with electric green and black. As she cocks her hand, a large hunk of rock resting on the ground next to her floats up into the air, wreathed in the same jade and obsidian aura.

Karkat sucks in a sharp breath next to me.

"Old magic once flowed in our veins. Our blood ran every color of the rainbow. After the work of the Signless, our hemomorphs were sealed into castes and our powers locked behind biological pathways. We study and quantify the mechanisms, the genetic keys, but there's a fundamental unphysicality at the root of it all that distinguishes them from conventional biology."

"Psychics," Karkat connects.

She nods, letting the rock drop. " The Sufferer's Irons are an active continuous binding, not an single-instance spell, and its seal burns fierce and strong to this day. Our problem is that they were designed for a world bifurcated by the primordial Veil, and although it is unclear how they will react to the lifting of the divide, a lot indicates the outcome will be... unpleasant."

"You need to destroy it," I realize. "And you need the descendant of the Signless for that. And then you'll all become extra psychic? Also, wow, you're really talented at telling stories."

"Yes," Kanaya confirms. "To the first part. I don't consider myself particularly good at storytelling. I simply have excellent tutelage."

She smiles at Rose. I can hear gagging next to me.

"So what you're telling me is that I _do_ have a a bullshit ancestral destiny to fulfill and the deranged cult nubfuckers were right all along," Karkat states flatly. "What a fucking joy. Alright, what do I have to do? Spill my entrails over the steaming corpse of a virgin Mother Grub? Act out a live-action re-enactment of the holy moron's gruesome death? I'll go and prepare the burning irons shaped like the punchline to an sex joke, be right back."

"It is relatively simple," Kanaya assures. "We will journey into the old caverns-"

"That's a World Heritage Site."

"-through an auxiliary entrance a mere mile from where we are. We will seek an audience with the Mother of Monsters, who has already been made aware of our imminent arrival by Yaldabaoth in advance. You will have to bleed-"

"I knew it."

"-upon the circle sixty nine drops of blood-"

"_I fucking knew it!_"

"-which we have determined to be equivalent to three point five cubic centimeters, and Rose and I will perform the necessary rites to dissolve the binding."

Karkat slumps back on the ground and groans, covering his face.

"This is too much. Just leave me alone here for a moment and contemplate why my life has, in the span of one night, evolved from the roaring dumpster fire it already was into a trashy YA urban fantasy novel complete with edgy bloodletting, obligatory quadrant drama and the goth Mary Sue fucking shit up."

"How is Rose going to get in there?" I point out. "Or is the tunnel flooded?"

"I brought the All-Terrain Aquatic Specimen Transport Module from LOLAR," Kanaya admits. "It's not a morally ideal solution, but considering the stakes, I judged it to be a justifiable appropriation of company property."

Dave coughs pointedly, attracting a quizzical look from Kanaya. I shush him, pointedly not looking at the electrokinetic generator I still have yet to return. I will! Some day!

"Fuuuuck," Karkat moans next to me. "We're all going to jail, aren't we?"

"Okay. What do I have to do with all this, then?" I ask.

Rose's eyebrows draw together. "...Nothing?"

I blink.

"Oh."

"I am delighted to see you, don't get me wrong. And I look forward very much to catching up," Rose clarifies. "But you didn't factor into any of our plans. It was merely a coincidence that you showed up."

...I'll be honest, that's kind of a relief? All of this sounds like a lot more than I expected. I mean, if they need me I'm happy to help, but I have no problem letting Karkat take the lead on this one.

"God, fine, awesome foresight, John is useless, yadda yadda," Karkat shouts. "Let's just get this over with. When are we going?"

Rose chuckles. "Not _now_. We need to prepare, and you need sleep anyway."

"Yes!" Karkat exclaims, jerking up. "Sleep! That's the best idea you chucklefucks have proposed today. I'm going to crash in a slumber platform, pass out like a brick, and when I wake up all of this bullshit will have been a horrific dream and I'll return to my old peaceful existence as an underpaid lab monkey grinding out uninspired papers to keep my mutant ass off the streets. Good riddance, I say!"

I frown at him. "Karkat doesn't mean it."

"Oh, we know," Dave says. "We're all well-acquainted with the zoology and behavior of the wild Karkat in his natural habitat. Seasoned Karkat biologists up here with doctorates in Karkatology and decades of field experience. In fact I've personally journeyed far and wide to observe the indigenous Karkat populations of the eight continents. The Scottish highlands to the Amazonian Jungles to the hinterlands of Russia and the exotic coasts of the Hawaiian isles, ain't no Karkat I haven't seen before."

"The Karkat research institute thanks you for your contributions to the field," I remark, nodding along sagely.

"Someone point me the way out of this cave," Karkat grinds out.

* * *

The ceiling is dripping again.

The other three have left, leaving me and Dave alone in his den. I asked to stay behind. With this place filled to the brim with people only moments ago, the emptiness of the cave feels particularly strange now.

"Hey," I finally say.

"Hey," he replies. "So you wanted some one-on-one quality time with me?"

I sigh.

Lowering myself off the edge, I drop myself into the water next to Dave, clipping the cave bed with the edge of my feet. I take a few seconds scrambling for footing before I find a good spot that leaves my head above the surface. Rose heated the water to something more palatable to a human, so it's pleasantly warm, like taking a hot bath.

"There were too many people and it was a bit overwhelming, I guess," I admit.

"I get you," Dave says. "I've had this hideout all to myself for years now, and _bam_ crazy sister and trolls and cute biologist out of nowhere. I'm still getting used to the climate control myself. She couldn't do that before."

"It sure is handy," I agree.

Silence drags on. The only sound in the chamber is the slow drip of water and gentle waves sloshing against the shore. 

"Got you a new phone," I mention, jerking a thumb back at the pile of stuff I brought.

"Oh. Thanks. Sorry about the old one." He taps his neck and a chain necklace shimmers into view, the citrine jewel hanging in front of his bare chest. "Rose called me out of the blue like it hasn't been a fuckin' million years and a half since I last heard from her. Dropped what I was holding like an idiot. Hundreds of dollars down the drain."

Dave sounds genuinely apologetic despite the lackadaisical narration. I peer at the dimly glowing jewel.

"It's a communicator?" I ask. "No, sorry. That's not important."

"There's a range limit. Two leagues, got no idea what that is in normal person units."

"You can touch," he offers.

I rest a tentative finger against the gem, almost expecting a zap or static shock, but the crystalline surface is only slightly warm to the touch. The way the heat thrums silently from the inside reminds me of an overheating computer.

"So Karkat's going on a quest soon," I muse idly, retracting my hand. "With Rose and Kanaya. It's just going to be us again."

Dave is quiet for a second before he goes softly:

"Good thing or bad thing?"

The question brings me up short.

"Neither?" I try. "It's nice when it's just us, but it's not like having other people around is _bad_. Hey, and now that they're lifting the magic barrier thing, I can get all my other friends to meet you without being afraid of all of that memory stuff."

He offers me a faint smile. "That would be nice."

It's an understatement.

"This whole deal... it's not as simple as Rose makes it sound, is it?" I say, turning from the shore and shift my weight against the rock. I take his hand, squeezing it softly. "The... reintegration, I mean. It's going to be big. Global scale stuff."

"Yeah," he admits. "Rose didn't say, but she also wanted you guys here to finagle some kind of formal relationship with your company. Apparently the sexiest thing about her vampire girlfriend is the industry connections and research grants. She's got plans. The kind that you need legal backing and unscrupulous investors to pull off."

"Vriska is going to throw a fit," I chuckle. "But she would be dumb to not leap at an in like that. And Vriska is anything but dumb."

"World's changing," Dave says simply.

He rests his head against my shoulder. The soft weight is reassuring in a way words can't be. For a while I simply let myself loose in the warm contact of his skin, driving the exhaustion from my mind.

But the thought keeps coming back to nag at me.

"Are you..." I begin, hesitating. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," he answers a hair too quickly. "Why?"

How do I bring this up?

"About me and Karkat," I mutter.

He barks a short laugh, and for a second my heart jumps out of my throat. But it's not a bitter laugh or an angry laugh.

"I was going to ask the same thing," he chuckles.

Oh. _Oh_. I join him in the stifled giggles. Laughter shakes through our joined bodies.

"I don't care if you hook up with Karkat," he clarifies once we settle down. "I mean, god damn it'd be a crime if I got in the way of you two. You could write a PhD thesis on that chemistry you have."

"You really think so?" I wonder, laying my head against his. "I haven't really thought about him in that way. Karkat was always this annoying grumpy guy that somehow weaseled his way to becoming my... one of my best friends. And he's really funny, sure, but it was a spur of the moment decision. I don't know."

"He has a black crush nine miles deep on you," Dave informs me with a _well, duh_ tone. With a snort, he adds, "Though I'm not sure it's _all_ black. You know the stories about the First Ship."

"That's... what I was worried about," I say. It's not just about Karkat's side; I don't know if I can even hate that way! "Are you really okay with this set up? Most humans don't like sharing their concupiscent halves."

"John," Dave groans. "It would be insane kinds of hypocritical for me to complain about that. I mean, Jesus—you had front row seats to me wooing the exact same guy paleways and I didn't offer you the same courtesy of asking." His voice tightens up as he keeps talking faster. "And I saw your look. You weren't happy about that. You know, it's alright for _you_ to be angry at me. You didn't sign up for this, you're perfectly entitled to tell us to fuck off, I promise we can work something out if you don't-"

"It's fine!" I cut in hastily. "Hey, give me some credit. Both of you are my friends, so even if I don't like it, which is a total hypothetical anyway, it's no biggie. I'll deal."

"You know this doesn't change anything between you and me, right?" he says quietly. "I'm not going to stop sharing things with you because now I have a dedicated dude for that. It's not an either-or thing. Troll romance is a bullshit social construct anyway."

My breath hitches.

"Thank you. It... it means a lot."

"Thank _you_ for not making a big deal out of it."

I fidget. "And, uh, in case you get the wrong impression: my thing with Karkat, it isn't like trying to passive-aggressively get back at you or anything."

A pause.

"I know," Dave mumbles.

I have no clue how I've managed to get this far without messing up yet, but I send my thanks to the gods, mythological or not, for letting us somehow get through that minefield in one piece.

"I still need to talk to _him_," I note, brushing my thumb over Dave's. "God, it's going to be so awkward. Going by the movies, pitch negotiations always go horribly. And I don't have anything else for reference unless you count Vriska and Eridan's spats. Isn't that the saying, that if need to negotiate a pitch relationship you've already failed?"

My thoughts aren't coming out very well.

"I don't know if that's even what I want," I try again. "The idea of spades is so completely foreign to me. We have our weird, friendly-arguey dynamic and we're _good at it_, but I don't know if it fits into the mold of black rivalry, you know? I don't even know if I want to kiss him or do any of that stuff."

I think about it.

"Okay, maybe that's a bit of a lie. Karkat's pretty cute."

"Damn right," Dave agrees. "He's like an adorable grumpy teddy bear filled with foul language and every time you squeeze him he burps out a different swear word. Hey, your company should sell Karkat plushies that do that. Capitalize on your assets."

"Ughh," I groan. "I'm sure he'll will have an appropriate movie for me to consult for reference, probably with another one of those stupidly long titles. That or an article from the Journal of Intersectional Sociology."

Dave chuckles.

"I'll let you in a secret," he says.

When I turn my head to him, he's wearing a small smile.

"I told you that all of us mythical weirdos, we're an amalgam of what people _think_ we should be, right?" he starts.

I nod, waiting for him to continue.

"So if you look at the folklore, stories of sirens, we're not exactly monogamous in a lot of them. Sure, you have The Little Mermaid, but thing is, mers are all pretty much half-poly."

Oh.

"Poly, as in..."

"Polyamorous, John."

Another soundless 'oh' escapes from my lips.

"I'm not going to start dating around," Dave adds hurriedly. "I like you. A lot. And it's not like I have a wealth of choice—no, scratch that, that's the worst argument to make. But I like you, and so if I have to stay exclusive I will, but I don't have that same visceral pair-bonding _need_ to keep it one-to-one, you know?"

I nod slowly, but I'm not sure I understand what he's getting at.

"So..."

"So I don't care that you're not entirely coloring inside the lines. I'm don't mind if you and Karkat become a thing and I'm not going to take you to divorce court if you and him end up somewhere that isn't strictly black."

"You're jumping too far ahead," I protest. "Okay, so you're fine with it, but what if I'm not that comfortable with the idea myself? And I dunno, it sounds kind of like a raw deal for you."

He shrugs. "You keep thinking I'm human, but I'm not. My brain doesn't work completely like yours. Hey, any human would have gone completely batshit insane all alone for this many years, but look at me! Obviously the font of mental stability." Dave grins at me.

"I get that," I sigh. "It's... doing the quadrant thing already feels too much like cheating. In both senses of the word."

"It was never a symmetrical exchange in the first place. We have different needs, we get different things. And actually that's true for any relationship between any people, you know, even when one of them isn't an aquatic half-beast. If we're happy and consenting, who cares?"

"You're saying we don't need labels," I translate.

Dave snaps his fingers. "Yes! Exactly."

"I've read my fair share of angsty Internet psychology."

He hums in approval.

Dave raises a finger. "But on the other hand, in favor of sticking to our quadrant guns, I pose the alternative argument: we'd make a neat closed tricule."

We would, wouldn't we?

"Don't let Nepeta hear you," I snort. She would love this whole ridiculous situation I've gotten myself into.

"Nepeta..." he repeats. "I've heard that name from Karkat. Aw shit, furry troll girl? That reminds me: I need to get in touch with Jade as well."

"We will," I promise.

He leans into me.

"You know, we can do that right now," I point out.

I can feel Dave's head shake in the crook of my neck.

"Nah. You look like you're about to keel over and drown. Get some sleep."

"You sure?" I yawn. "It's like... noon, in Mongolia."

Dave gives me an exasperated smile. "We have plenty of time."

"Tomorrow," I say, gripping his arm.

He prods me. "Yeah, yeah, now get out of my hair. Your troll pals are waiting for you."

"Rude," I mumble, but he's already drawing away from me, batting away my grabbing hands.

"Goodnight kiss?" I suggest.

He complies. I sink into him, my limbs circling around his back, his hands hooking behind my shoulders.

When we break off, Dave looks as dazed as I feel.

"Don't let me drown," I whisper

"No promises."

I laugh and push off into the sea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't sure until the very end if I wanted to keep John♠Karkat implied or make it explicit until the very end. Hopefully I wrote it obvious enough that it didn't seem out of the blue for anyone, or at least I hope it retrospectively makes sense.
> 
> Cursory research tells me mermaids/merpeople actually seem to come in two major flavors in the different mythologies they appear in, either as fish-humans that fall in excruciatingly vanilla love (a la Andersen's _The Little Mermaid_), or as evil creatures that lure men to their doom (sirens), so Dave's statement isn't entirely incorrect.

**Author's Note:**

> If this doesn't feel like a very concludey conclusion, you're probably right. I wanted to leave it more open-ended since any ruling on relationships would make some people happy and others unhappy, so I'd rather let people imagine their own endgame. In-universe this is obviously only the start of a journey, but what goes next isn't really relevant to this story, which is fundamentally about Dave and John even if I have a tendency to spin off into random plot.
> 
> I've put some thought into the setting, as evidenced by the copious exposition—honestly, Rose and Kanaya's arctic adventures could be their own spinoff and are probably more interesting than John and Dave messing around on a beach—I'm kind of done with the universe. I'm not entirely happy with how I wrote some parts of this, so if anything a rewrite or reboot would be more likely (though still not very) than a sequel or spinoff.
> 
> Anyway, thank you for everyone that's been following along, as well as the people browsing the Homestuck tag with the "complete" filter that are only now finding out this exists. It's been a journey, mostly in finding out how inconvenient it is trying to set up scenes with a person without legs and another person without gills. Seriously. You can't do anything with these two.
> 
> Leave a comment, complain about my writing, check out my other works if you like, and have a nice day.


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